READILY granting that the art is a noble one; noble in its subject and
ends: all that I am surprised at is, that the men did not find it out
sooner. Probably the nobility of this art is only begun to be sounded so
high by the men, till they discovered the possibility of making it a
lucrative one to themselves. Then indeed the ignorance and incapacity of
the poor women for it, came all of a sudden to be doubted and despised.
The art with all its nobility was for so many ages thought beneath the
exercise of the noble sex: it was held unmanly, indecent, and they might
safely have added impracticable for them. But had even any of the
medical profession not thought so, there is great reason to think the
rest of mankind would have viewed their interested endeavors to usurp
this province from the female sex, in the light they deserve. It was
only for the eternal fondness which prevails among the French for
novelties, that paved the way for the admission of so dangerous and
indecent an one, as that of men making a common practice of midwifery,
and taking it out of the women’s hands, to which it was so much more
natural.
I AM here far from wishing to enter into a contest with the men, on the
superiority and excellence they assume over the women; though not quite
so indisputable perhaps as is commonly imagined. All that I contend for,
to the purpose of the present question, is, that there are certain
employments and vocations, which are generally and naturally more proper
for one sex than for another. A woman would seem to aim at something
above her sex, that would set up an academy for teaching to fence, or
ride the great horse: but a man sinks beneath his sex, who interferes in
the female province. It is not with quite so good a grace as a woman
that he would spin, make beds, pickle and preserve, or officiate as a
midwife. Be this observed without impeachment of the superiority of men.
OPEN books, sacred and profane, you will find that the Egyptians were
not so simple as Dr. Smellie would give us to understand they were; when
in the beginning of his introduction, pages 1st and 2d, he grants us,
out of his special grace and favor, “that in the first ages the practice
of the art of midwifery was _altogether_ in the hands of women, and that
men were never employed but in the utmost extremity: indeed (says he) it
is natural to suppose, that while the _simplicity_ of the early ages
remained, women would have recourse to none but persons of their own
sex, in diseases _peculiar_ to it: accordingly we find that in Egypt
midwifery was practised by women.”
ACCORDING to scripture, however, the sorcerers of Egypt were not so very
simple neither, since they had art enough to imitate some of the
miracles of Moses, in transforming their rods into serpents, blood into
water, and covering the land with frogs[1]. All this did not favor of
simplicity.
THE Egyptians[2] have ever passed for the most intelligent and
enlightened of all the other nations of the earth, who respected them as
oracles of wisdom and sound philosophy. They are the first people who
established systematically rules of good government. This profound and
serious nation saw early the true end of human policy; and virtue being
the principal foundation and cement of all society, they industriously
cultivated it. At the head of all virtues they placed that of gratitude.
The honor attributed to them of being the most grateful of men, shews
that they were also the most social. They had an inventive genius: their
Mercuries, who filled Egypt with surprizing discoveries, scarce left any
thing wanting to the perfection of their understanding, or to the
convenience and happiness of life. The first people among whom libraries
were known to exist, is that of Egypt. In short, so far from being
simple or ignorant, they excelled in all the sciences. There were indeed
among them no _men-midwives_; but to make up for this deficiency, they
had, it seems, excellent midwives.
BESIDES it is even ridiculous to confine the practice of midwifery by
females only to early ages. Who does not know, that it was so in all
ages, and in all countries, till just the present one, in which the
innovation has crept into something of a fashion into two or three
countries. The exceptions before, or any where else, to the general
rule, are so few, that they are scarce worth mentioning.
BUT to return to the so _simple_ Egyptians. We read in Exodus, chap. i.
v. 15. and following, that Pharaoh said to the midwives, “When ye do the
office of midwife to the Hebrew women, and set them upon the stools, if
it be a son then ye shall kill him, but if it be a daughter she shall
live.
“17. But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt
commanded them, but saved the men-children alive.”
THE king reproached them, as may be seen in the same place.
WHY did not Pharaoh give the same order to the men-midwives, if there
had been any such employed in difficult or extraordinary pains? (as Mr.
Smellie supposes.) Or rather, if the king had not thought it too
unnatural for women to be delivered by men, he certainly would not have
failed to have commanded it, especially on perceiving that the midwives
had deceived him. This would have been a fine occasion to have forbidden
them their function, and for the men-practitioners to have come into
vogue. The men would certainly have been of the two not the improperest
to have executed the intentions of the tyrant: as tender-heartedness is
surely not more the character of their sex, than of the women. Besides,
their instruments would have served admirably to have thinned the
species, without distinction of the sexes. They might also have
concealed the barbarity of the murders by such instruments, under the
pretext of their necessity from hard-labors, as the midwives excused
their disobedience under that of easy ones, which had rendered their aid
superfluous.
OBJECTION the Third.
SO many authors as have wrote on the art of midwifery, from the age in
which Hippocrates florished, whom we look on as the first and father of
the men-midwives, with the disciples whom he formed, and their
successors, do not they satisfactorily prove the antiquity of
man-midwives?