Background
Marie Colinet was born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1560, the daughter of a Swiss printer.
Marie Colinet was born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1560, the daughter of a Swiss printer.
Her work spanned the late 16th and early 17th centuries. She was originally a midwife in Geneva. Her husband taught her surgery, but by his own admission she excelled him.
From 1602 to 1610, the Fabrys stationed in Payerne, Connecticut. Vaud, after which they traveled through Switzerland, Holland and the Rhineland, finally in 1615, they settled in Bern, where both were recognized by the award of citizenship.
She was the mother of eight children, only one of whom (Johannes, later a surgeon himself) outlived her. By training, Colinet was a midwife-surgeon who perfected the techniques in Germany of Caesarean section delivery (which hadn"t changed since the days of Julius Caesar).
She did everything from minor surgery to C-sections. The professional highlight of her career came when she encountered a patient whose sight was being threatened by a nasty sliver of metal.
She used heat to expand and stimulate the uterus in childbirth, performed Caesarian sections, and successfully removed eye splinters.
In one especially difficult case of a man with two shattered ribs, she has to open his chest and wire together the fragments of bone. On reclosing the wound, she covered it with a dressing of oil of roses and a plaster of barley flows, powdered roses, and wild pomegranate flowers, mixed with cypress nuts and raw eggs. Then bandaged it with padded splints.
After that, she regulated his diet and stayed with him for ten days.
The man was well after four weeks. Her complex herbal plasters prevented infection and promoted healing.
However, it was he who was given cr for her discovery. - The honorary Parisian citizenship, 1615.