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Jacques Pierre Maygrier
Jacques Pierre Maygrier (1771-1835) was born at Angouleme, in the Cognac region of southwestern France, and entered on the French navy in 1787 and served as a surgeon at the port of Brest for the next decade. In 1797 he left to pursue further medical training in Paris, studying anatomy under the accoucheur Antoine Dubois (1756-1837; successor to Baudelocque at the Hopitâl Maternité) and interning at the Hopital Cochin and the Hotel Dieu. Over time, Maygrier came to specialize in obstetrics, and he became "professeur libre d'accouchemens." As such, he provided private instruction in midwifery nearby the Faculté de médecine, which did not open an obstetrical clinic until 1840. Maygrier's publications include Des qualitiés physiques et morales de l'accoucheur (1801) and Nouveaux éléments de la science et de l'art des accouchements (1822-29). The social sensibilities of the early nineteenth century dictated that male midwives or accoucheurs averted their eyes during vaginal exams and conducted only a digital. The evidence of the ambivalence and unease this caused is suggested by the images in two different editions of Maygrier's.
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