French obstetricians

Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (27 May 1894 – 1 July 1961), better known by the pen name Louis-Ferdinand Céline ( say-LEEN, French: [lwi fɛʁdinɑ̃ selin] ), was a French novelist, polemicist, and physician. His first novel Journey to the End of the Night (1932) won the Prix Renaudot but divided critics due to the author's pessimistic depiction of the human condition and his writing style based on working-class speech. In subsequent novels such as Death on the Installment Plan (1936), Guignol's Band (1944) and Castle to Castle (1957) Céline further developed an innovative and distinctive literary style. Maurice Nadeau wrote: "What Joyce did for the English language...what the surrealists attempted to do for the French language, Céline achieved effortlessly and on a vast scale."From 1937 Céline wrote a series of antisemitic polemical works in which he advocated a military alliance with Nazi Germany. He continued to publicly espouse antisemitic views during the German occupation of France, and after the Allied landing in Normandy in 1944, he fled to Germany and then Denmark where he lived in exile. He was convicted of collaboration by a French court in 1951 but was pardoned by a military tribunal soon after. He returned to France where he resumed his careers as a doctor and author. Céline is widely considered to be one of the greatest French novelists of the 20th century but remains a controversial figure in France due to his antisemitism and activities during the Second World War.

François Joseph Herrgott (12 September 1814, Guebwiller – 4 March 1907, Nancy) was a French surgeon and obstetrician.
In 1839 he graduated from the University of Strasbourg, where he was a student of Louis Jacques Bégin (1793–1859) and Joseph-Alexis Stoltz (1803–1896). In 1841 he relocated to Belfort, where in 1849 he was appointed chief surgeon at the Hôpital de Belfort. In 1854 he obtained his agrégation at Strasbourg, later becoming chief physician of the Hôpital Civil in Strasbourg.
From 1872 he was associated with the Faculté de médecine at Nancy, where in 1879 he succeeded his former mentor, Joseph-Alexis Stoltz, as chair at the clinic of obstetrics. A few years later he was appointed director of the Maternité et de l'École départementale des sages-femmes.

Xavier Delore (7 August 1828, Fleurie – 20 February 1916, Romanèche-Thorins) was a French surgeon and obstetrician.
In Lyon he served as surgeon-major at Charité Hospital (1859–1872) and associate professor of clinical obstetrics at the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy (1877–1886). His name is associated with "Delore's method", defined as a forcible manual procedure for treatment of genu valgum.

Stéphane Étienne Tarnier (29 April 1828 – 23 November 1897) was a French obstetrician who was a native of Aiserey.
He studied and practiced medicine in Paris, and is often considered as doyen of French obstetrics during the second half of the nineteenth century. Some of his better-known assistants were obstetricians Pierre-Constant Budin (1846–1907), Paul Bar (1853–1945), Alfred Auvard (1855–1941) and Adolphe Pinard (1844–1934).
Tarnier is remembered for his work involving the perinatal aspects of obstetrics, and in particular, the treatment and well-being of premature infants. In the 1870s he realized that keeping a constant temperature was not sufficient for a premature infant's survival. He believed that isolation, hygiene, appropriate feeding, and a warm, humid environment were also necessary. Inspired by a device used to incubate poultry, Tarnier introduced prototypes of infant incubators to the Paris Maternité in 1881. These devices were basically wooden boxes with glass lids and compartments that contained hot-water bottles. He called his "baby-warming device" a "couveuse", and through it Tarnier was responsible for a 28% decrease in infant mortality over a three-year period at the Paris Maternité.
Tarnier was not the inventor of the infant incubator, but was the first to apply it for regular care of the premature. In 1857 surgeon Jean-Louis-Paul Denucé (1824–1889) provided the first description of an "incubator crib", and in 1864 obstetrician Carl Credé (1819–1892), constructed a double-wall crib that used circulated hot water to heat the walls of the crib.In the 1880s, Dr. Auvard made modifications to Tarnier's couveuse. The "Auvard incubator" was an inexpensive device of simple design that soon became widely popular, and variants of this incubator were still in use into the 20th century. A type of axis-traction forceps called the "Tarnier forceps" is named after him.