Catherine Jérémie

In 1702 Jérémie settled in Montreal with husband Michel LePailleur where she pursued her studies and research in botany and midwifery.^[3] She was particularly interested in the medicinal practices of the Indigenous populations of Canada. She studied these medicinal plant uses and further discovered many remedies.^[2] She applied these findings to her knowledge of women's health.^[3]

Jérémie was one of the earliest botanists in Canada and the first female naturalist known to date. She was known in the French scientific world for providing French naturalists with detailed reports of the plants they collected, and she sent her collections to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, encouraged by the French Académie des Sciences in order to collect Canada's flora and fauna. Colony intendant Gilles Hocquart noted her practices as significant in his reports to France and these collections are now preserved at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Overall, Jérémie made a large contribution to natural science in New France.^[4]

Jérémie's knowledge of herbal remedies increased her reputation and practice as a midwife, as she was able to apply these uses specifically to women's healthcare, such as abortion, pregnancy and birth.^[5] In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most midwives engaged in a private practice, were less costly than doctors, and stayed at their client's homes for longer periods of time while helping with household chores. Jérémie used the interventionist approach to healthcare, which contradicted the laissez-faire approach of many English scholars.^[3] She soon became known as a famed midwife and was referred to as "la magicienne de ma vie au Quebec" (the magician of my life in Quebec) by one of her clients.^[5]

• Timeline of women in science