Female Impotence or Obstruction of the Womb? French Doctors Picturing Female Sterility in the 1820s

• Published in: The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History pp. 311 - 333
• Main Author: Vasset, Sophie
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: London Palgrave Macmillan UK
• Subjects: Agency; Case notes; Experience; Patronage; Spa
• ISBN: 1137520795; 9781137520791
• DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-52080-7_17

This chapter explores a specific medical case from 1829, discussed in the correspondence of a small-town physician, Dr. Lamothe, and Dr. Delpit of the spa town of Barèges (in this period, spa treatment was thought effective for fertility problems). It analyses the variety of medical sources referred to directly or indirectly by Dr. Lamothe to diagnose the patient’s disease, and therefore demonstrates the interplay of medical, scientific, and cultural understandings of infertility in the everyday practice of one early nineteenth-century medical doctor. A comparison of Dr. Lamothe’s gendered interpretation of his patient’s condition with the medical treatises of the time shows that individual doctors negotiated their relationships with patients in ways which are not obvious from published accounts. Finally, the chapter analyses how infertility is depicted in Le Dictionnaire des sciences médicales, a popular reference source for many provincial doctors, in order to show its impact on physicians.