1627

Louise Bourgeois, highly esteemed midwife at the court of French monarch Louis XII, attends Marie du Bourbon-Montpensier, first wife of Gaston d’Orleans, son-in-law of Louis XII. On 5 June Bourbon-Montpensier died after giving birth to a daughter, probably owing to peritonitis. An autopsy followed, along with a report by five physicians and five surgeons attached to the court. The report did not implicate Bourgeois directly and left open the cause of death, but on 8 June Bourgeois replied with a fierce attack on the competence of the signatories of the report, Apologie de Louyse Bourgeois. The case was then taken up by Charles Guillemeau, first surgeon to the King, who penned a no less blistering condemnation of Bourgeois’ incompetence. Bourgeois, seemingly disgraced and without court defenders, had no choice but to withdraw completely from court. She spent her remaining years putting together her Recueil des secrets, and died in 1636 (Perkins, ch. 2).