What is not to love about a book penned by a powerful, self-possessed midwife to the royals of France in the early seventeenth century that begins with a strong swipe in verse at potential slanderers; poetically praises a who's who of influential players of the court; weaves together multiple, curious gynecological observations and remedies, interspersed with remarkably detailed witnesses to noble births of dramatic, and at times highly comedic, proportions; and finishes with a remedy to soothe vomiting? It is with great joy that we announce the birth of Alison Klairmont Lingo and Stephanie O'Hara's long-awaited, beautifully presented edition of Louise Bourgeois's work Diverse Observations. Swaddled in impeccably researched scholarly commentary and aglow in its smart, readable translation, this important opus awaits our visitation with great promise.

The editor's claim that Bourgeois's work represents a “landmark text in the history of medicine” (12) is easy to accept, given the wide-reaching and comprehensive scope for not only the author's contemporaries but also for today's readers eager to learn more of the gendered landscape of the medical professions in the early modern period. Diverse Observations, presented and translated here in its entirety, originally appeared in three volumes across the span of Louise Bourgeois's illustrious career as midwife in the most rarefied circles of Parisian society—a career that made her present at several royal births. Bourgeois, not immune to engaging playfully in the metaphorical richness of her subject, declares in “To the Reader,” “The birth, then, of this book, a sample of my practice, is a school that teaches everyone the admirable effects of the divinity of Medicine married to the midwife's industriousness” (92). Her previous entreaty to the queen has prepared this project boldly: “It is also reasonable that I be the first woman of my art to take pen in hand to describe the knowledge that God gave me, in order to make known the mistakes that can occur, & the best way to practice the art [of midwifery] well” (90). Her mission is thus pedagogical, professional, and urgent in its claim to save women's lives from an industry shrouded in ignorance, superstition, and theory-based medicine, unchecked by the practical experience that Bourgeois has to offer as a seasoned midwife. Louise Bourgeois's career unfolded in a highly contested terrain of competition, increasing regulation, misogyny, dangerous incompetence, and sluggish modernization. Her publications are as hybrid as one can imagine, given the marriage of her hands-on labor with the male-defined arena of scholarly medicine. Diverse indeed are her observations and advice, which include strident self-defense, engagement with contemporary beliefs and practices surrounding birth, recipes and remedies that she has tested, and eyewitness accounts of all manner of birthing misadventures. In a text that is by turns manual and manifesto, Bourgeois's voice shines through in vivid and engaging prose (beautifully rendered by O'Hara), perhaps nowhere more evident or entertaining than in her anecdotal moment-by-moment retellings of high-stakes births of future monarchs.

A first stop would be Bourgeois's account of Marie de Médicis's labor and delivery of the dauphin at Fontainebleau, preceded by a lengthy retelling of the interviews and negotiations that led to her successful, if controversial, choice as royal midwife. Over the course of the queen's labor, which lasted twenty-two and a quarter hours, Bourgeois navigates not only the normal anxieties of her charge's first delivery but also the high drama that her station would incur: the crowds of court favorites vying for bedside seats, sensitive young princes reeling at the spectacle, a worrisome father (Henry IV) rightfully obsessed with the sex of his child, and the elaborate shenanigans constructed to dissemble and eventually reveal the news. At the joyful conclusion we learn, typical of the author's penchant for a good yarn in which she plays a starring role, that “tears flowed down his face, as big as large peas” (255). Throughout Bourgeois's three volumes, we are entertained with many such observations, and are also instructed constantly on the roiling controversies of jealous physicians, midwives, and civic and religious leaders intent on regulating women's bodies at their moment of highest vulnerability. If Bourgeois's writings are a bit of a mash-up, serving a number of personal and professional agendas, Alison Klairmont Lingo's meticulously researched annotations and introduction could not be clearer or more helpful to our understanding of this truly amazing work. Her scholarly labor delivers an overview of gender and medicine that a broad range of readers, from novices to seasoned historians, will find solid and engaging.