Overseeing Childbirth: The Revolutionary Forms of Surveillance That Reshaped Obstetrical Care

When childbirth becomes a state affair Childbirth, an intimate, familial, and physiological event, has historically also been a space of control and surveillance. Paris between 1789 and 1804 represented a turning point in the history of childbirth and of midwifery: in a few years of dizzying political changes – absolute monarchy to republic, and eventually to empire under Napoleon – Parisian obstetrics underwent important institutional reforms that transformed it into a laboratory for experi...