Marie-Louise Lachapelle

Marie-Louise Lachapelle (1 January 1769 – 4 October 1821[1]) was a French midwife, head of obstetrics at the Hôtel-Dieu, the oldest hospital in Paris.

Lachapelle was born in Paris to Marie Jonet, a prominent midwife, and Louis Dugès, a health official, on 1 January 1769.

Because of Lachapelle's medical experience and reputation, she was asked by the Minister of the Interior Chaptal to direct the new normal school of midwifery and children's hospital La Maternité which the Napoleonic government established at Port Royal.

The book was finished by her nephew Antoine Louis Dugès, also an obstetrician, who published it in 1825 under the title Pratique des accouchements; ou mémoires et observations choisies, sur les points les plus importants de l'art ("The practice of deliveries; or chosen observations and memories on the most important points of the art"); the book was influential throughout the nineteenth century.

She taught students of midwifery modern techniques for performing a delivery, by demonstrating potential complications with a model and autopsying women who died in childbirth.

It is known that she tried to exclude the hordes of observers from the delivery room, that she advised immediate repair of a torn perineum, that in cases of placenta praevia she quickly dilated the mouth of the uterus with tampons and extracted the infant by turning it, thus saving two lives.

She also invented a method of deftly turning a face or oblique presentation so that the infant could be born with forceps, and of replacing a protruding arm or shoulder before it was too late.

Lachapelle also made strides in the hygiene practices of the hospital; her efforts to reduce child mortality rates were quite successful, including her restrictions on visitors.

[11] She also wrote articles recording her observations for the periodical Annuaire Medico-Chirurgical and furnished statistics for the members of the conseil d'administration des hospices.