Minister of the Interior Chaptal to direct the new normal school of midwifery and children's hospital La Maternité which the Napoleonic government established at Port Royal. In order to be a part of the reforms, Lachapelle went to Heidelberg to study, and then returned to Paris, where she became head of the maternity and children's hospital at a newly built teaching hospital, Hospice de la Maternité, an offshoot of the Hôtel-Dieu at Port Royal. Lachapelle died of stomach cancer on 4 October 1821 after a short illness, her book yet unfinished. The book was finished by her nephew Antoine Louis Dugès, also an obstetrician, who published it in 1825 under the title Pratique des accouchements; ou mémoires et observations choisies, sur les points les plus importants de l'art ("The practice of deliveries; or chosen observations and memories on the most important points of the art"); the book was influential throughout the nineteenth century. In it, she opposed the use of forceps in childbirth for most cases and advocated for minimal intervention by doctors during delivery. Teaching Jean-Louis Baudelocque and Lachapelle worked well together and developed a course of study for training midwives. After a year-long course, the students took a rigorous examination, and they would receive a diploma from the Ecole de Medicine if they passed. She also wrote many books as part of her teaching service and improved the hospital care of patients. She taught students of midwifery modern techniques for performing a delivery, by demonstrating potential complications with a model and autopsying women who died in childbirth. Her methods kept disease very low in her hospital. One of her students was the accomplished midwife Marie Boivin. She treated her students like members of her own family, supporting them physically and spiritually. She moved through the wards, going wherever she was most needed, encouraging patients, and patiently teaching staff members. In her teaching, she stressed the importance of noninterference with the birth process unless it was absolutely essential and she opposed the use of forceps except in case of absolute necessity. Contribution Lachapelle is credited with several worthwhile innovations in patient care and midwives' training. It is known that she tried to exclude the hordes of observers from the delivery room, that she advised immediate repair of a torn perineum, that in cases of placenta praevia she quickly dilated the mouth of the uterus with tampons and extracted the