Angélique de Coudray

In 1759, French king Louis XV launched a project to reduce infant mortality in the country and commissioned Parisian midwife Angélique du Coudray to train peasant women as midwifes. From 1760 to 1783, she trained approximately 10,000 women across France, visiting poor women in rural areas and sharing her extensive knowledge with them. Presumably the women she taught also passed those skills on to outhers in following years. Du Coudray also invented the first lifesize obstetrical mannequin, so the women could practice mock births, and published a popular midwifery textbook, Abrégé de l’art des accouchements (The Art of Obstetrics, 1759). Due to the lack of accurate data collection, it is impossible to quote statistics about infant mortality rates (which were frequently underreported in the 1700s and earlier), but it seems inarguable that du Coudray must have directly and indirectly saved countless lives, of both mothers and children.

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Adah Thoms

Adah Belle Samuels Thoms was an African-American nurse who co-founded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses and served as president from 1916 to 1923.

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Winifred Kennan

Winifred Kennan worked with Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital as its medical superintendent from 1921-1923 and later as honorary consultant obstetrician.

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Dr Janet Graeme Travell

Janet Graeme Travell was an American physician and medical researcher. She was the first woman to be appointed as the presidential physician, by John F. Kennedy in 1961.

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Dr Agnes Elizabeth Lloyd Bennett

Dr Agnes Elizabeth Lloyd Bennett OBE was a New Zealand doctor. She served as the Chief Medical Officer of a medical unit during World War I and was later awarded an O.B.E. for her services in improving the health of women and children.

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