A. M. Mauriceau

author

A. M. Mauriceau

Best known for a blunt, widely circulated 1840s guide to women’s reproductive health, this byline was attached to advice that mixed medical instruction, moral argument, and business promotion. Behind the name was not a single well-documented literary figure, but a pseudonym tied to New York’s controversial reproductive trade.

1 Audiobook

The married woman's private medical companion : embracing the treatment of menstruation, or monthly turns, during their stoppage, irregularity, or entire suppression. Pregnancy, and how it may be determined; with the treatment of its various diseases. Discovery to prevent pregnancy; its great and important necessity where malformation or inability exists to give birth. To prevent miscarriage or abortion. When proper and necessary to effect miscarriage. When attended with entire safety. Causes and mode of cure of barrenness, or sterility.

The married woman's private medical companion : embracing the treatment of menstruation, or monthly turns, during their stoppage, irregularity, or entire suppression. Pregnancy, and how it may be determined; with the treatment of its various diseases. Discovery to prevent pregnancy; its great and important necessity where malformation or inability exists to give birth. To prevent miscarriage or abortion. When proper and necessary to effect miscarriage. When attended with entire safety. Causes and mode of cure of barrenness, or sterility.

by A. M. Mauriceau

About the author

A. M. Mauriceau appears to have been a pseudonym rather than a clearly identifiable author. Sources connected to The Married Woman's Private Medical Companion link the name to the New York circle around Ann Lohman, better known as Madame Restell, a notorious nineteenth-century seller of contraceptives and abortion services.

Several library, museum, and scholarly collection records say the book was published in 1847 and attribute the pseudonym to Charles Lohman, Ann Lohman’s husband, sometimes in partnership with Joseph F. Trow, her brother. Other records are a little more cautious and note that the alias may have been used by Charles Lohman, Joseph Trow, or both.

What can be said with confidence is that the name A. M. Mauriceau became associated with an influential and controversial manual on menstruation, pregnancy, fertility, contraception, and abortion. The book reached a wide audience, went through multiple editions, and stands today as a revealing document of how reproductive advice, commerce, and secrecy came together in nineteenth-century America.