Adolphe Pinard

Who was Adolphe Pinard?

Adolphe Pinard was a French obstetrician who was a native of Méry-sur-Seine. He practiced medicine in Paris, where he was an assistant to Étienne Stéphane Tarnier and a professor of obstetrics.

Pinard was a pioneer of modern perinatal care and the "puericulture movement" — the teaching of infant care to expectant mothers in French obstetrics. He made a number of contributions in his work involving pre-natal and maternal health, and was an advocate of providing social care for pregnant women from deprived environments. He established abdominal obstetric palpation methods, and his name is associated with "Pinard's maneuvre", a technique used in breech extraction.

In 1895 he invented a special stethoscope for listening to fetal activity. The device is sometimes reverently referred to as a "Pinard horn", or fetoscope