accoucheur

A man practising midwifery or obstetrics, particularly a medical practitioner attending women during childbirth. The term was widely used in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, when male practitioners increasingly entered a field previously dominated by female midwives. As obstetrics developed as a medical speciality, obstetrician increasingly replaced accoucheur in English, and came to denote a specialist, male or female, in pregnancy, childbirth, and related care. Accoucheur is now chiefly historical or literary in English.