ALMOST all the sciences and arts attain to perfection, in process of
time, through the experience and assiduous attention of those who
cultivate them. We owe the most of our rare and precious inventions to
the ages of barbarism, in which as yet reigned that brutality and
ignorance which the irruption of the northern swarms had diffused over
all Europe. This invention and perfection of arts cannot be attributed
to merely human industry; but, with more probability, to a particular
over-ruling providence, which commonly concealing itself under what
seems to us the weakest, and under occurrences which appear to us the
effect of chance, have guided men to wonderful discoveries. Do not we
owe to a fair Circassian the art of inoculating children? And surely the
art of midwifery, perhaps more than any other, stands the fairest chance
of being improved by women.
FOR my part, I dare maintain it, that the surgeons, in form of
men-midwives, have been the death of more children, with their _speculum
matricis_, their _crotchets_, their _extractors_ or _forceps_, their
_tire-têtes_, &c. than they have preserved. If in killing the children,
they have saved the lives of some mothers, they have hurt and damaged,
not to say murdered, a number of others. Their faults ought to set us
upon searching out for a better way of going to work; a more easy, a
more safe one. This fatal operation by instruments might even be
pronounced absolutely useless in the profession. There is no inveighing
severely enough against so dangerous a doctrine as that which recommends
them. Even common humanity requires an endeavour to open the eyes of
those, who imagine they cannot do better than blindly to assent, in
every point, to authors recommendable, it is true, by a number of good
things, but whose authenticity in those points procures them but the
more dangerously credit in erroneous ones. Good sense does not dictate
undistinguishingly receiving all that is advanced even by the best
authors. As they may have been themselves deceived, they may also
deceive us. The sacrifice of our reason is what we owe to nothing but to
revelation. Books written by men have no title to it. As their
understanding is not above the impositions of others, or errors of their
own, they may adopt falsities, through ignorance, through prejudice, for
want of examination, or of right reasoning. Their heart may also have
been byassed or corrupted by views of interest or of ambition. I may
therefore, without over-presumption aver, that with regard to
instruments, it is wrong to lay any stress on the authority of others.
For, with all the respect due to some illustrious writers in these
modern times, who defend the party opposed to ours, it may be assuredly
said, that either they have not known the art of midwifery, or that they
have formed their judgment of it by nothing but the abuses of the
antients, who practiced it without knowing it. Is it not a crying shame,
that operators, who in their life-time massacred such numbers of human
creatures, should still retain, after death, credit enough to
assassinate common sense? Faith is given to unskilful authors, who have
deceived their cotemporaries, posterity, and perhaps themselves:
ignorance admires, enthusiasm protects them. But what a cruel and mean
policy must be that of supposing, that the knowledge of truth ought not
to have a clearer title to dominion than the illusions of imposture? I
hope however, that, when the eyes of the public shall, in this point,
come to be opened, and opened they will be, if true physicians will give
themselves the trouble to enlighten it, that public will at length see,
that an approbation, unpreceded by a due examination, does it as little
honor as service.
LYING-IN women principally require an early assistence. For unless they
are pregnant of a monster with two heads (a case so rare, that in the
practice of a thousand surgeons, in their whole life, it may not twice,
nor perhaps once fall in their way) there need never be an occasion of
recourse to a surgeon: for in this case, of a monster, it must be the
affair of a most profoundly skilled operator and not of merely a common
man-midwife.
RUN over all the authors who have written on this matter, and you will
find that the men-midwives, for want of right, and of true knowledge of
the profession, have introduced themselves by force and violence, as one
may say, sword in hand, with those murderous instruments: read the
ancients, it will appear, that they cut their way in, with iron and
steel, forerunners of murders. Our moderns to palliate these violences
and injustices, agree on one hand, that the common and gentlest methods
are to be preferred: but, on the other hand, when you tell them, that
the common and gentlest methods are the hands of women, who ought
therefore to be preferred to the men, and to be restored to their
antient and rightful possession; then you will see the whole pack open
in full cry: to arms! to arms! is the word: and what are those arms by
which they maintain themselves, but those instruments, those weapons of
death! would not one imagine, that the art of midwifery was an
art-military?
AS for we women, we can but in our weakness groan under this tyranny.
Our protest, joined to that of reason and experience, avails little. Our
wise innovators have a great deal more wit than we have; but it is not a
wit of which we would be ambitious: for it serves them no better, than
under the pretence of saving to be paid for destroying: at least it is
not unfrequently so.
OBJECTION the Ninth.
OPINION often makes a stronger impression on us than truth. Whatever you
may say to the contrary, the imagination will prevail of life, being
safer in the hands of a man than of a woman. For, in short, of what
importance can a woman be, who, after all, is but a woman? This is so
true, that most of our women now a-days will have a man-midwife, some
through prejudice, others through good œconomy, because if there are any
prescriptions necessary for the patient, the man-midwife, who is also
stiled the doctor, will write for them; whereas, if there is a midwife,
a physician may moreover be requisite: this is an additional charge.