The success of la Maternité as the great French Lying-in Hospital and Training School for Midwives was probably as much due to the wise and painstaking management of the widow Lachapelle as to the skill and great experience of Baudelocque. It is therefore only fitting that I should give here a brief biographic sketch of this admirable woman.
Veuve Lachapelle, whose maiden name was Marie-Louise Dugès, was born at Paris on January 1, 1769. Her mother, Marie Jonet, was at first a sworn midwife (“Sage-Femme Jurée”) at the Chatelet Hospital, but later (1775) she was promoted to the position of Midwife-in-Chief of Hôtel-Dieu, the largest hospital in Paris. Madame Jonet made her home in Hôtel-Dieu, and she performed the duties of her very responsible office with such zeal, such conspicuous ability, and such faithfulness that the Government awarded her, when she retired after a long service, a liberal pension. The daughter Marie, who had been brought up with great care under the constant supervision of her mother, and who had lived from day to day as it were in the midst of pregnant women and women actually undergoing confinement, absorbed unconsciously a great deal of information, both theoretical and practical, concerning the art of midwifery. Although she married, in 1792, Monsieur Lachapelle, the Resident Surgeon of the Hôpital Saint-Louis, she continued her residence at Hôtel-Dieu, with her mother, to whom she was strongly attached; and after the death of her husband, which occurred not long after they had been married, this attachment rather increased. Madame Lachapelle, who from this time onward was known as Veuve Lachapelle, showed such a keen interest in her work and performed all her hospital duties with such skill and such excellent judgment that in 1795 the Government appointed her the Associate Chief Midwife of Hôtel-Dieu.
At a somewhat later date, during the administration of Minister Chaptal, the Maternité Hospital was organized, and Madame Lachapelle was made the Resident Directress of the new institution. Baudelocque was appointed Surgeon-in-Chief and Professor of Obstetrics, and Madame Lachapelle was given the position, under him, of Instructress in Midwifery. François Chaussier, Baudelocque’s successor and one of the most distinguished French physicians of that period, declared that Madame Lachapelle was a most successful teacher of the art of midwifery, and added that her usefulness in this field extended far beyond the period of her active connection with the Maternité Hospital; for she had made a regular practice, during her residence in that institution, of keeping an immense number of carefully prepared records of the cases which came under her observation, and these, which form the basis of the volumes published after her death, by her nephew, constitute—as Chaussier believes—a most useful work of reference, second in value only to the great work of Baudelocque.
Veuve Lachapelle’s death occurred on October 4, 1821. The work referred to in the preceding paragraph bears the following title: “Pratique des Accouchemens, ou Mémoires et Observations Choisies sur les Points les plus Importans de l’Art,” publiées par Antoine Dugès, neveu de l’auteur, Paris, 1821–1825, 3 vols.
CHAPTER XXVI
FURTHER DETAILS CONCERNING THE PARIS FACULTÉ DE MÉDECINE AND CONCERNING SOME OF THE LARGER HOSPITALS OF PARIS
The present chapter is intended to supply, in as condensed a form as possible, some of the facts relating to the growth of the Paris School of Medicine, and also information concerning one or two of the larger hospitals of Paris. As such details are not likely to possess interest for more than a comparatively small number of my readers I unhesitatingly advise all others to skip this chapter.
“The Medical Schools[[26]] of the Rue de la Bûcherie,” says Chereau, “are still in existence to-day (1866), although somewhat altered in appearance. They stand at the angle formed by the Rue de la Bûcherie and the Rue de l’Hôtel Colbert. These buildings, however, masquerade under singular forms. Since the day when our fathers in medicine abandoned the Temple of Aesculapius (1775) it has been put to a great variety of uses, such as a public lavoir, a tap room, a cabaret where thieves meet, rooms equipped each with a number of beds, and a lupanar, where the fee charged was twenty sous a sitting; the room in which Riolan taught anatomy converted into a low-down billiard saloon; the ground over which Femel walked, soaked with all sorts of nasty fluids; the office in which sat the employés of the school—those vigilant guardians of the rights and dignity of the Faculty—plastered with police ordinances; the chapel, in which the doctors were wont piously to attend mass, now occupied as a miserable lodging-house; etc.”