Robot of the Week (3B)

Although not, stricly speaking, a robot–nor even automated–Madame du Coudray’s “Birthing Machine” fits well within early mechanisms which were designed to mimic or shed light upon the body’s physical functioning.  This device, in particular, was quite useful and was used for helping to train midwives in the delivery of children.

For more information about this work, you can consult Nina R. Gelbart’s The King’s Midwife: the History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray.  You might also find the following of interest–Leslie Adrienne Miller’s poem on the subject:

“Madame Du Coudray’s
Woman Machine, 1756″

I perfected an invention that pity made me imagine.
–Madame Le Boursier du Coudray, Abrege

   After D’Agoty’s macabre ecorches
   and Rymsdyck’s tendency to coil
   his innards tight as bags of fists
   and then to paint a fatty sheen
   on every part, I gasp out loud
   when I find Le Boursier’s soft machine
   of linen and leather, the woman’s thighs
   great hams of rosy fabric gathered
   at the knees like parlor bolsters,
   the plush swell of belly draped
   in a modest apron opened in a V,
   that all who would deliver her
   might see the fine embroidery
   of the wrinkled vulva giving way
   to the crowning cloth doll, one puffed
   umbilical cord to announce life,
   another flat to advertise a death.
   While D’Agoty’s sexy ecorches
   live on in countless volumes, only one
   of Madame du Coudray’s machines
   for instruction in the art of birth
   remains, this one with its wicker bones
   and wooden pelvis replaces her original
   which tucked a gate of real pelvic bones
   inside the giant cushion. Sundry detached
   pieces lie about: the pillowy placenta
   as if infused with waters still, the warning
   of a crushed and severed infant skull
   to show the damage of an unforgiving tug.
   She made her mannequin of cloth
   for the women of Clermont who couldn’t read,
   much less afford D’Agoty’s illustrated books,
   who worried more about the warming
   of the wine and butter in which a living child
   was cleansed, or the sturdy shoes the dead
   would need for traveling hard dark roads
   to nurse their babies from the grave.
   She listened while they spoke of prolapse,
   mangled parts, torn limbs and broken backs,
   the ragged, filthy fingernail of someone’s
   helpful aunt or neighbor tearing the sight
   from a child’s eye. From these tales
   she fashioned her machine, pushing
   her needles through the flesh colored cloth
   as capably as she pushed her hands,
   merciful and clean, into the darkened rooms
   of a thousand unupholstered wombs.
–in the June 2005 issue of Prairie Schooner

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You’re currently reading “Robot of the Week (3B),” an entry on C-LIT 146: Class Forum

Published:
August 22, 2006 / 1:31 am
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Robot of the Week
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