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Heritage! Dittrick celebrates MuseumWeek with WWI Lakeside Unit

It's #heritageMW this Thursday, and the Dittrick has a lot to celebrate! Cleveland's Humanities Festival kicks off next week with the theme Remembering War, and the Dittrick will host an April 7th guest talk by Heather Perry: “Feeding War: Gender, Health, and the Mobilized Kitchen in WWI Germany.” In addition to this event, the museum will open a temporary exhibit on the Lakeside Unit, Base Hospital No. 4, out of Cleveland, Ohio, was the first contingent of the United States Army to see active duty in Europe in the First World War.  Come and find out more about General...

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Madame du Coudray: A Midwife in a Man's World?

Here on the Dittrick Blog, we've begun a series on body-snatching for the purpose of anatomy... but today, we'd like to interrupt that history with another, equally fascinating but focused on the other end of the life spectrum. It's National Midwifery Week, and today we present the history of a "woman in a man's world," the midwife Madame du Coudray. Angelique Marguerite Le Boursier du Coudray (1712-1790) was the “King’s Midwife” in France. And yet, Madame du Coudray left no journal and few personal papers, meaning that while her deeds are well-recorded, her life is still somewhat mysterious. She remained...

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Madame du Coudray: A Midwife in a Man's World?

Angelique Marguerite Le Boursier du Coudray (1712-1790) was the “King’s Midwife” in France. And yet, Madame du Coudray left no journal and few personal papers, meaning that while her deeds are well-recorded, her life is still somewhat mysterious. She remained unmarried, though took on the title of Madame, appropriate to her work as a sage femme (literally “wise woman,” but also the French term for a midwife). Mission and Machine: “Saving Babies for France” "Th paradox of the singular, idiosyncratic woman who follows a 'quest plot' instead of a 'marriage plot” –Nina Gelbart, The King’s Midwife, 13 After ten years as a midwife...

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