Born: 1712, France
Died: 17 April 1794
Country most active: France
Also known as: NA
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 others in following years. Du Coudray also invented the first life-size 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 under-reported 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.