THE preservation of so valuable a part of the human Species as pregnant
women, as well as that of their dear and tender charge, their children,
so powerfully recommended by the voice of Nature and Reason, to all
possible human providence for their safe birth, forms an object so
sensibly intitled to the private and national care, and even to that of
universal society, that all enforcement of its importance would be an
injury to the human understanding, or at least to the human heart. It
would look too like imagining that it could be wanted.
WHAT I have then to say preliminarily, must chiefly arise from my own
due sense of my inequality to the subject of which I presume to treat.
Though, if example could be any countenance, I might plead that of so
many authors who have, with the utmost confidence and the utmost
absurdity, written upon the art of midwifery, without understanding any
thing at all of it. The truth is, that my very natural and strong
attachment to the profession, which I have long exercised and actually
do exercise, created in me an unsuppressible indignation at the errors
and pernicious innovations introduced into it, and every day gaining
ground, under the protection of Fashion, sillily fostering a preference
of men to women in the practice of midwifery: a preference first
admitted by credulous Fear, and admitted without examination, upon the
so suspicious recommendation of those interested to make that Fear
subservient to their selfish ends.
OF these disorders, pernicious as they are to society, I have however
been long with-held from taking public notice by far from groundless
scruples. Being myself a practitioner, I had just reason to fear, that
my representation would have the less influence, from a supposition of
personal interest in them. They might naturally enough be construed as
the result of a jealousy of profession. I had yet a reason more
particular to myself against interfering in this matter. My husband is
unhappily for me a surgeon-apothecary: I say unhappily, because though
of a business I maintain to be so foreign and distinct from the function
which I profess, there might not be wanting, among such as would imagine
their private interest attempted at least to be hurt by me, a suspicion
that I was indirectly aiming at recommending his advantage in prejudice
to theirs. Yet so far, so very far is this from being the case, that the
main scope of my essay is to prove, that his business has no relation at
all to mine, and that especially as to the particular point I would wish
to establish, he is absolutely as indifferent to me as any other person,
either of his own profession, or of any other whatsoever. This prejudice
then of self-interest being fairly annulled by the appeal to the
manifest drift of the work itself, which gives him as formally the
exclusion as to any other of his sex, I had still a repugnance to the
entering into a discussion of abuses, that could not be laid open
without exposing truths, that might have an air of invidiousness or
detraction.
SOME friends of mine, to whom I communicated my doubts, agreed with me,
that there are faults which cannot innocently be revealed, where their
manifestation may be attended with some greater evil, but that it could
not be right to rank among the faults to be spared any error in an art,
where one single false idea, suffered to subsist, may prove the occasion
of wounds or torturous death to thousands. On the contrary, the due
knowledge of faults of this nature is, in fact, a public benefit. They
serve, as one may say, for beacons to the art, they hold a light to it,
and show it the rocks it should avoid.
IT is certain then, that I have not the least intention to attack any
particular persons, any farther than in what I conceive to be false
theory, or mispractice in the art I profess; I hope then it will not be
imputed to me as unfair or over-presumptuous, if I especially do not
over-respect writers or practitioners, who themselves have not respected
either common-sense or common-humanity.
HAVE not some of our modern authors, especially the male-practitioners,
who in these later times have treated of midwifery, added new and worse
errors of their own to those bequeathed to us by the antients, whom they
have insulted, as they themselves will probably one day be, but with
more reason, by their successors, if the world should continue blind
enough for them to have any in this profession? One would even imagine,
that in the criticisms in which they indulge themselves of one another’s
systems and instruments, they are inflicting part of the punishment due
for their common offences against Nature, in the abuse of an Art,
originally intended to assist her. At the same time, even from their own
showing, nothing can be plainer, than that their boasted inventions
have, under the specious pretence of improvement, fallen from bad to
worse, as is ever the case of superstructures on the crazy foundation of
false principles.
READ the men-writers on this art, and you will find interspersed in most
of them, amidst the most flagrant proofs of their own ignorance of it,
reproaches to that of the midwives, too just, perhaps as to some, but
shamelessly absurd in them, who to that ignorance substitute their own
subtilities of theory, which, when reduced to practice, are infinitely
worse than any deficiency in some particular female-practitioners; being
mostly, in truth, fit for nothing so much, as to prepare dreadful work
for their instruments.
BUT if they so falsely exalt their own learning above the ignorance of
women; they have their reason for it. They seek to drive out of the
practice those who stand in the way of their private interest: that
private interest, to which the public one is for ever sacrificed under
the specious and stale pretext of its advancement.
CAN it then be wrong in any of our sex and profession to endeavour, at
least, to justify ourselves, and to undeceive the public, of the ill and
false impressions which have been given it of our talents and ability?
Pernicious prejudices have sometimes their run, like epidemical
distempers: and surely it is more for the service of mankind, that their
duration should be shortened, than suffered to proceed without at least
an endeavour to oppose them.
I SHOULD, however, be much more pleased with an exemption from the
disagreeable task of composing the apology of our sex in this matter, it
being contrary to that modesty which becomes us so well; but as the
men-midwives, in their system of exalting their powers of Art over ours
of Nature, keep no measures with truth, I see myself forced to do
justice to our function, and to manifest the unreasonableness of that
contempt, with which they treat and depreciate our services; and with
which they have, in favor of their own interest, perhaps too
successfully imbued the public.
IN this attempt of mine there is no blamable ostentation. If I set in
their just light of utility the qualifications of the women of our
profession, as to industry, dexterity, ease of execution, patience,
constitutional tenderness, and especially natural aptitude, it is no
more than practical truth warrants, and the throwing a due light into
the matter of comparison requires. Yet I do not wish, that we should
pass for any thing beyond what we really are. All the partiality, all
the tender feelings it is so natural for me to have for the sufferings
of my own sex, would be sufficient to with-hold me from desiring to
establish any opinion or practice tending to endanger the personal
safety of women in child-birth, or of any thing so dear to them as their
children. I am myself a mother.
I OWN however there are but too few midwives who are sufficiently
mistresses in their profession. In this they are some of them but too
near upon a level with the men-midwives, with this difference however in
favor of the female practitioners, that they are incapable of doing so
much actual mischief as the male-ones, oftenest more ignorant than
themselves, but who with less tenderness and more rashness go to work
with their instruments, where the skill and management of a good midwife
would have probably prevented the difficulty, or even after its coming
into existence, prove more efficacious towards saving both mother and
child; always with due preference however to the mother.
I WILL also, with the same candor, own that there are some not intirely
incapable men-midwives: but they are so very rare, and must forever
necessarily be so, and even, at the best, so inferior to good midwives,
that a worse office could scarce be done to mankind, that on so false a
supposition as that of a sufficient ability in them, to explode the
practice of the art by women, because some of them might be
exceptionable. And how should it be otherwise, than that some should be
more deficient than others? is there that art in the world, to which the
same objection does not lie of different degrees of merit in the
professors of it, as well as that of the imperfection of all human arts
in general?
IN the mean time, the consequences of this unfair conclusion against the
women professors of midwifery, in affording the men a plea for
supplanting them, do not hitherto appear very advantageous ones to the
public. It remains, I fancy, to be proved, that population is any gainer
by the diminution of that evil, to which the instruments or other
methods of practice, employed by the men, are pretended to be such a
remedy.
TO examine this point is the object of the following sheets; the work
being divided into two parts.
THE first treats of our title to the practice of this art, of the pleas
used by the men for arrogating to themselves the preference, of the
knowledge of Anatomy, of the necessity of the instruments, of the
incapacity of women, of the Fashion: and whether the superior safety is
on the side of employing men-practitioners.
THE answers inserted to each objection, all together, constitute an
essay to remove the prejudices, which have been so industriously, and
too successfully disseminated against the female practice of this art;
and to show that the substitution of the men, more especially of their
iron and steel-implements, is attended with greater danger, greater
mischiefs, than those which that substitution is pretended to prevent or
redress.
THE second has more particularly for object to demonstrate the
insufficiency, danger, and actual destructiveness of instruments in the
art of midwifery. To this purpose I therefore pass all that is needful
of them in review, in the several cases, in which the antients and
moderns would persuade us they are necessary. I set myself to establish
my exceptions to them by incontestable examples; but above all, by the
authority of reason and experience. I take notice of some of the
manifest contradictions to be met with in almost all the authors, to one
another. I have ventured to subjoin some observations, taken from my own
observations and practice, in lieu of what I condemn, and to point out a
method of operation, much more plain, more tender, more secure, than the
one by instruments. I support this by those general principles, which
have happily guided me on all occasions, and from which it is even easy
to refute the pretentions and system of the instrumentarians, in which I
shall note here only three essential defects.
THE _first_, in that the origin of the men, insinuating themselves into
the practice of midwifery, has absolutely no foundation in the plea of
superior safety, and, consequently, can have no right to exact so great
a sacrifice as that of decency and modesty.
THE _second_, for that they were reduced first to forge the phantom of
incapacity in the women, and next the necessity of murderous
instruments, as some color for their mercenary intrusion. And, in truth,
the faculty of using those instruments is the sole tenure of their
usurped office.
THE _third_, their disagreement among themselves about, which are the
instruments to be preferred; a doubt which, the practices tried upon the
lives and limbs of so many women and children trusted to them, have not
yet, it seems, resolved, even to this day.
BUT reserving to treat upon these and other points more at large, in
their place, I am to bespeak the reader’s candid construction, of my
having, especially in the beginning of the first part, transiently
availed myself of the authorities of authors, sacred and prophane. It is
less that I think truth stands in need of such corroboratives, than to
show that it is not destitute of them. It is not by authority, but by
reason, that truth, in matters of temporal concernment, claims
acceptance from reasonable beings. At the worst, those to whom they may
present a tiresome prospect, have but to skip them over; or if they
peruse them, they are desired not to forget that no stress is laid on
them, beyond their being answers to arguments of the like nature, urged
on the opposite side of the question.
THOUGH instruments are not within my sphere of practice; though
consequently I have the honor of not being personally very well
acquainted with them, nor have I at hand all the original authors who
have published their own inventions of them, I have been sufficiently
enabled to do justice to their pretentions, by a recourse to those who
professedly and fully treat of them. My guide is commonly Monsieur
Levret, who is one of the exactest describers of them. Not most
certainly that I otherwise prefer him, for of the utility of his forceps
I think just as ill as I do of all the rest.
I SHOULD have been glad to avoid at once the barren driness of
abridgments furnishing no distinct ideas, and the tedious exactness of
particularized descriptions and histories; as for example, of the
forceps, as well as of errors committed by practitioners; but this
medium I could rather wish than hope to keep. I have then been so afraid
of obscuring matters by brevity, that of the two I have perhaps run too
far into the contrary and less agreeable excess: which, however, in
consideration of its favoring explicitness, is not perhaps the most
inexcusable one.
I WISH I could make an apology as receivable by a reader, who will
doubtless be justly disgusted at the repetitions I have too little
scrupled the making of the same thoughts, and even sometimes of the same
expressions. Yet I dare bespeak, from his candor, some indulgence to the
confession of a fault, it will easily be perceived I could not well
escape, without the worse inconvenience to himself, of his being
perplexed with references back to past pages, besides, that sometimes a
chain of argument would be broke, consequently weakened, by the
suppression of some link of it, on account of the matter having been
elsewhere already employed in other connexions.
UPON the whole, I throw myself, with the more confidence, on the
favorable acceptance of the public, from my consciousness of its not
being but with the best intentions for the good of society that I hazard
this production: and have therefore reason to hope, that it will
occasionally be remembered, that my object is purely that of
representing a truth, and not of recommending a composition.
Page 20. For blood into water _read_ water into blood.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
OF
PART the FIRST.
_In gratitude of the men-midwives at Paris to their women-teachers of
the art_, page 6.
_Regulations of the profession of midwifery not unworthy the national
care_, 9.
OBJECTION I. _Prior possession of the art in the men_, 14.
ANSWER, 14.
OBJ. II. _Preference of the men founded on the nobility of the art_,
17.
ANS. 15.
_Egyptians not so simple as Dr. Smellie pretends_, 19.
OBJ. III. _Writings of the men-authors prove the antiquity of
men-midwives_, 24.
ANS. 24.
OBJ. IV. _Manual operation a science fittest for the men_, 28.
ANS. 29.
OBJ. V. _Anatomy necessary_, 32.
ANS. 32.
OBJ. VI. _Instruments, their use peculiar to the men_, 35.
ANS. 36.
OBJ. VII. _Ignorance only exclaims against instruments_, 39.
ANS. 40.
_Dr. Smellie’s false account of the_ Hôtel-Dieu _at_ Paris, 44.
_No men-practitioners suffered in it_, 47.
_Dr. Smellie’s Doll-machine_, 50.
_Compendious forming of pupils_, 52.
OBJ. VIII. _It is a presumption in women to enter into competition with
men in this art_, 52.
ANS. 53.
OBJ. IX. _Opinion prevalent of superior safety under the hands of the
men_, 58.
ANS. 59.
OBJ. X. _Ignorance of the women_, 73.
ANS. 73.
_How the young men students get their_ learning, 80.
_Women cruelly used to procure it them_, 83.
_Story of a woman’s child killed with a crotchet_, 92.
_Examination of a passage of Plato quoted by Dr. Smellie_, 99.
_Pecquet, a great anatomist, the victim of his own erroneous
speculation_, 101.
OBJ. XI. _Partial artists the best_, 106.
ANS. 107.
_Story of a Dentist_, 109.
_A man-midwife’s toilette_, 111.
_Story of a woman perishing suddenly after delivery_, 128.
_Cruel method of training up pupils_, 137.
_Story of a child horribly murdered_, 139.
_Lessons of midwifery given by Madam Clavier_, 144.
PUDENDIST, _a name in the stile of oculist or dentist, more proper
for a male-practitioner of midwifery than_ ACCOUCHEUR, 151.
OBJ. XII. _Men-midwives have terminated happily many labors_, 151.
ANS. 151.
_Triumph of a man-midwife_, 158.
_Why young practitioners should conceal their instruments_, 173.
_Appeal to numbers for the greater safety with women, verified by the
practice of the midwives at the_ Hôtel-Dieu _at_ Paris, 180.
OBJ. XIII. _Prevalence of the Fashion_, 184.
ANS. 184.
_Parallel of error in the preference of men-midwives to that of
bringing up of charity-children by hand_, 187.
_Story of a woman ashamed of having been lain by a midwife_, 204.
_Inoculation justified_, 207.
_The greatest lady in Britain no example in favor of_ Accoucheurs,
210.
_Midwives formed by the men-practitioners liable to caution against
them, and why_, 213.
_Alarming danger of a scarcity of good midwives, to what owing_, 217.
OBJ. XIV. FALSE-MODESTY, _that of the women, who prefer the
practitioners of their own sex_, 219.
ANS. 219.
_Story of Agnodice and the Athenian women canvassed_, 219.
_Dr. Smellie’s_ COMMANDMENT _to his pupils against immodesty_, 224.
_No stress laid on the Rabbit-woman of Godalmin_, 225.
_Attitude indecent, and to no end nor purpose_, 237.
_A stone of more virtue than a man-midwife_, 239.
CONCLUSION _of the_ FIRST PART, 244.
PART the SECOND.
_Containing various observations on the labors and delivery of lying-in
women, including a description of the pretended necessity for the
employing instruments_, INTRODUCTION, 249.
_Of_ DELIVERIES, 256.
_Story of the sudden death of a woman after delivery_, 261.
_Accounted for_, 262.
_Method of prevention_, 263.
_Histeric medicines invented by the_ learned _men-practitioners, and
examples of their insignificance_, 267.
_Of_ DIFFICULT _and_ SEVERE _cases_, 277.
_Divisions of them_, 279.
_Profound ignorance of certain men-midwives_, 282.
_Their avarice and cruelty set forth by a man-midwife_, 286.
_Midwives incapable of such horrors_, 288.
_The Crotchet used, and its horrid effects, exemplified in several
stories_, 291.
_A_ VOLUME _might be made of them, says a man-midwife_, 298.
_Some instances of male-practice_, 304.
_Of_ TOUCHING, 309.
_Of the_ OBLIQUITY _of the_ UTERUS, 329.
_Of the_ EXTRACTION _of the_ HEAD _of the_ FŒTUS _severed from the_
BODY, _and which shall have remained in the_ UTERUS, 358.
Speculum matricis _given up by Dr. Smellie: so would other
instruments be, if justice was done them_, 367.
_A curious method of_ CELSUS, 369.
_Inventions of_ CAWLS _and_ FILLETS, 369.
_Of that labor in which the_ HEAD _of the_ FŒTUS _remains hitched in
the passage, the_ BODY _being intirely come out of the_ UTERUS, 372.
_Quackery of Daventer_, 378.
_Two examples of children, the one killed, the other supposed dead,
and losing its head by errors in the manual function_, 379.
WHEN _the_ HEAD _of the fœtus presents itself foremost but sticks in
the passage_, 289.
_Objections to instruments more at large included under the title to
this section_, 389.
_Mauriceau’s_ tire-tête, 395.
_Palfin’s_ FORCEPS,
_with the improvements of various practitioners_, 398.
_A waggon load of instruments insufficient, and why_, 401.
_A curious nostrum of an instrument_, 406.
_Mr. Freke’s ingenious invention of a_ FORCEPS _and_ CROTCHET _all in
one_, 416.
_Dr. Smellie’s improvement of the forceps_, 417.
_The curve forceps of Levret_, 419.
_Case of a_ PENDULOUS BELLY, 445.
_Triumph of the moderns over Hippocrates and the antients in the
invention of the forceps_, 452.
_Inhumanity and folly of the general conspiracy against children_,
458.
CONCLUSION _of the_ SECOND PART, 466.
[Illustration]
A
TREATISE
ON
MIDWIFERY.
WHOEVER considers the absolute necessity of the art of midwifery, will
readily allow it a place among the capital ones in the primeval times of
the world. All the other arts are no further necessary to man, than to
procure him the conveniencies or luxuries of life; that of midwifery is
of indispensable necessity to his living at all, imploring as he does
its aid for his introduction into life. Without this art the earth
itself must soon become dispeopled and a desert, whereas by means of it
men have been multiplied, with inconceivable rapidity.
IN conformity to its claim of importance, this art appeared in all its
lustre among the Jews, the Egyptians, the Athenians and Romans, and
indeed in all nations during thousands of ages. Nor was the confinement
of the exercise of it to women deemed any derogation to it. It even gave
honor to its professors of that sex. Socrates, so ennobled by his
character of being the greatest philosopher in all antiquity, did not
disdain to boast himself the son of a very able midwife Phanarete, as
may be seen in Plato’s book on science, in Diogenes Laertius and others.
AMONG the Egyptians and the Greeks it cannot be hard to conceive what
emulation, what ardor it must have excited among the women of that
profession, the custom of distributing prizes to those of the greatest
merit in it, in the face of the people. No one is ignorant of the power
of honors and distinction to bring arts to perfection.
BUT from the instant the midwives sunk into dis-esteem, and wherever
that has happened, it will be found by woeful experience, that not only
the art itself has suffered in the very midst of the most falsely
boasted improvements, but that human-kind itself has much and very
justly to complain of the change.
THE native inconstancy and levity of the French nation opened the first
inlet, in these modern-times, to men-practitioners. In antient history
we meet with but one feeble attempt of that sort, which however soon
gave way to the united powers of modesty and common sense. In France,
and may it not be the same case soon here! the women of a competent
class of life and education, begin to decline forming themselves for
this profession, as beneath them, considering the slight put upon those
women who exercise it.
NOR has this injustice remained unpunished. Many women have found, by
severe experience, their having been enemies to themselves, in
abandoning or slighting those of their own sex, from whom, at their
greatest need, they used to receive the most effectual service, and who
alone are capable of discharging their duty by them, with that sympathy
for their pains, that tender affectionate concern, which may so
naturally be expected from those who have been, are, or may be subject
to the same infirmities.
MANY out of a distrust inspired them of midwives, have thrown themselves
into the hands of men, who have promised them infinitely more than they
were able to perform; and who behind all the tender alluring words, of
superior skill and safety in the employing of them, conceal the ideas
with which they are full, of cutting, hacking, plucking out piece-meal,
or tearing limb from limb.
THE murder of so many children, the fruits of their bowels, might, one
would imagine, have induced mothers to consider this point a little more
carefully. Yet, through the prevalence of groundless fears, and of
imaginary dangers they have run into real ones, and have sometimes found
their death precisely where they sought their life; and not seldom where
nature has even favored them enough in their labor, for them not to need
any extraordinary ministry of art, the men have put them to cruel and
dangerous tortures.
NOTWITHSTANDING some examples, and many violent presumptions of such
mal-treatment, too many women have been so miserably misled by fashion,
as to prefer the betraying the cause of their own sex, and the
subjecting themselves to those who deceive them with false hopes, to the
entrusting their preservation to those of their own sex, in the hands of
which the care of it has been for so many ages, with so much reason, and
such little cause of complaint.
YET we do not see that any of these men-midwifes have been capable of
forming a good midwife. On the contrary, we see, that in order to remedy
the abuses, or rather to prevent the fatal accidents which every day
occur in the practice of a profession so necessary to the preservation
of the human species, they were in France obliged to have recourse to
one of the ablest midwives in that kingdom, who was placed at the head
of the practice in the Hôtel Dieu at Paris, to preside over the
lyings-in there, and to found and cultivate that inexhaustible seminary
of excellent female practitioners, who have actually restored the art to
its antient degree of esteem, with all fair judges. These worthy
proficients have been so public-spirited, as to communicate their
talents and knowledge to a number of surgeons, who never had any reason
to be ashamed of the lessons they assiduously took from the midwives,
unless indeed for themselves not being able to come up to them in the
practice, so true it is, that the business is not at all natural to
them.
YET have even many of those very men-practitioners, influenced by that
self-interest which has such a power in all human affairs, revolted
against their mistresses in the art, and their benefactresses. They
have, at various times, commenced lawsuits, about the Hôtel Dieu at
Paris, in order to get the lyings-in there committed to them: but the
administrators, the persons of a just sense of things, together with the
parliament of that town, ever attentive to decency, without excluding
the due regard to the preservation of the subjects, have constantly
opposed and frustrated the pretentions of these innovators. These again
thus disappointed, were forced to content themselves with practising
upon some women of quality, under the favor and protection of some of
the old ladies of the court of Lewis XIV. who had their reasons for
propagating this fashion. And now these innovators, not without a due
proportion of ingratitude to the injustice, began to run down the
midwives, and exalt themselves. The novelty prevailed, and the contagion
of example soon communicated itself to the provinces, and thence into
neighbouring nations. A few men perhaps of real abilities, but governed
by the most sordid interest, associated to their party a number of the
most ignorant and unexpert practitioners, but who served to fill up the
cry, and made a common cause against the midwives, whose pretended
insufficiency was now to be pleaded in favor of themselves being
admitted to supplant them. Nor was the concurrent attestation in their
favor, of so many ages, during which the practice was entirely in female
hands, to weigh any thing against the boasts of their own superior
ability. They picked up and sounded loud a few real instances perhaps,
and undoubtedly many false ones of faults of practice in women: though
were the numbers of human creatures, who have barbarously perished by
the unskilfulness of the practitioners, to be fairly liquidated, it
would appear that fewer have been the victims of female ignorance, than
of the presumption and indexterity of the men. The women are undoubtedly
liable to error: there have even been monsters of iniquity among them,
but certainly in no number to form a general prejudice against them: but
as to the men they are all of them, as will be more fully demonstrated
hereafter, naturally incapable of the exercise of this profession. A
history of their murders might even be collected out of the books
written by them to establish their superiority over the women. From
Deventer, Mauriceau, and the most celebrated of their writers, amongst
many excellent observations in the way of the chirurgical art, many of
the grossest absurdities have escaped, where they transgress its bounds
and go into that of midwifery. Some of those absurdities too are so
glaring, that they have not even been overlooked by themselves.
MANY persons in Holland, having set up for men-midwives, without being
duly qualified, the government thought proper to interfere, and
consequently there was an ordinance issued on the 31st of January, 1747,
by which it was enjoined, that no one should practise in the quality of
man-midwife, or exercise this art, unless he were especially authorized
for this function, by a certificate of his having undergone a sufficient
examination before capable and intelligent judges for that purpose
appointed.
IT will appear, in the sequel of this work, that it were to be wished,
for the sake of the good that would redound from it, to the preservation
of the human species, both in parent and child, that those who are
entrusted with the public welfare, would establish the same regulation
in the British dominions, to expel and exclude from the art all the
ignorant pretenders of either sex, who are, in fact worse than the
Herods of society. The cruelty of Herod extended to no more than to the
infants; not to the mothers; that of such pretenders to both.
IF their conduct was to be examined with attention, how many fatal
mistakes would be discovered in the practitioners of both sexes? But I
dare aver it more in the men than in the women-practitioners. With what
horror would not there in these be remarked, tearings, rendings, and
tortures of no use to which they put both the mother and the child? One,
upon some most learnedly erroneous hypothesis, pulls and hauls the arm
of an innocent infant yet living, so that he plucks it off; or repels it
with such violence, that he breaks it: another unmercifully opens the
infant’s head, and takes the brain out: some bring the whole away
piece-meal: operations often to be defended only by hard words and
harder hearts.
NOR need this procedure astonish. Every thing is at the disposal, I had
almost said, at the mercy of these executioners: but have they any? all
their handy-work is transacted in private, and remains buried in the
tomb of oblivion. The parents suspecting nothing, think every thing has
been done, according to art, that is to say, very right. The operator
thinks he has done nothing but his duty, and is highly satisfied with
himself, after he has ordered some draughts for his patient. The
magistrate knows no injury done to the subject, or is insensible to the
consequences from the same spirit of confidence. In the mean time, a
husband loses a fine child, or a beloved wife, perhaps both; children, a
tender mother, and if they are of the same sex, have the same fate to
dread for themselves. The man-midwife is clear, for only saying, that he
has done all for the best. But this is probably true too, as to the
intention; but as to the fact, it shall be shewn that there is often
great reason to doubt it.
BE this observed, without offence to the few able men-midwives who are
masters enough of the business, not to deserve the reproaches due to by
much the greater number of rash and ignorant pretenders to it: whose
practice, well examined, would bring to light such terrible truths, as
would alarm even the legislature to provide a remedy against the danger.
IN contradiction to this, it may be urged, that the practice by women is
susceptible upon that account, of superior objections. That remains now
to be examined. The chief object of this work being a fair discussion,
which of the two sexes is the most appropriated by nature and art, to
the exercise of this function.
TO this end, I shall present, in a candid view, the two opinions which,
on this point, divide the English yet more than they do the French. Most
of the surgeons, all the men-midwives, no doubt, many apothecaries, a
number of women and nurses maintain, that midwifery is the business of
the men: whilst on the other hand, the best part of the able physicians,
with many other persons of both sexes, defend the contrary side of the
question, and insist on this art being, for many invincible reasons,
solely the province of female practitioners.
NOT to lose sight of the fundamental arguments and proofs brought to
support respectively these two opinions, I shall place them in parallel
with one another, in form of objections and answers. The objections made
to women-practitioners precede the answers. If the men-midwives, or
their partizans, shall think I have omitted any thing that makes for
them, or against us, or have any stronger or more essential arguments to
oppose, I shall endeavour to satisfy them.
OBJECTION the First.
REGARD ought to be paid to prior possession. The art of midwifery being
a branch of the art of physic, must have been originally in the hands of
man, the inventor of all arts.