IF this objection was fairly stated, it should be said, that the
ignorance of the women in the art of destroying mother and child,
occasions their not being trusted so much as they deserve with the
office of saving both. In that art indeed of perpetrating double murder
with perfect impunity, under the sanction of the public credulity,
imposed upon by a vain parade of learning, I readily confess the men
superior to the women. I do more than confess it, I will prove it; and
how? even from their own writings and confession, not extorted from them
by the spirit of candor, but from an interested desire of decrying or
supplanting one another, in order to self-recommendation.
IN fact, whoever will, with a competent degree of knowledge of the
subject, and of due impartiality, peruse the practical treatises of
midwifery, written by the most celebrated practitioners, some of whom
have so vainly pretended to the triple union of the characters of
man-midwife, surgeon and physician in one person, and it will be found,
that all their boasted superiority of erudition, has only led them into
the greater errors of practice, and the most barbarous violences to
nature.
BUT perhaps I exaggerate. Let the reader judge for himself, and
pronounce as his own reason shall dictate to him. Let him if he can read
without shuddering, the following quotation from one of the most
celebrated _men_-midwives of the age, Levret, p. 199. “Mauriceau had
invented a new _tire-tête_, which was to be introduced into that part
(the uterus). Peu or Pugh, like _many_ others, made use of different
hooks (_crochets_) and La Motte opening the head with scissors, scooped
out the brain, &c. We read, with horror, in _all_ these authors, that
they have extracted children, who, tho’ much _maimed_ or _mutilated_,
have yet _lived_ several hours.”
UPON this many reflections will naturally occur. These children thus
destroyed, owed most probably their death neither to nature, nor to the
difficulties of the passage through which the launch is made into our
world, but to the labor being prematurely forced, and the delivery
effectuated by those torturous instruments, which at once kill the
child, and not seldom irreparably wound the mother in the tender
contexture of these parts. A midwife, with less learning and more
patience than those gentlemen, and well acquainted with the power and
custom of Nature to operate in some subjects, sometimes more slowly, and
in all ever more safely and gently than art, would have left to nature,
not without her tenderest assistance of that nature, the expulsion of
the child. A proper predisposal of the passage, and direction of the
posture, with an unremitting attention to employ the fingers, so as not
to lapse the critical moment of operation, often never to be recovered
with safety to mother and child, would have, I repeat it, and appeal to
common sense for the probability thereof, saved the lives of those
innocents, which thus fell the victims of those _learned_ experiments,
with instruments, which, by the way, be it remarked, none are so forward
to use, as those who are the loudest in exclaiming against the employ of
them. And reason good, if they exclaim against them, it is evidently in
order to cover their practice with them, against which the minds of
their patients must so naturally be revolted. But that exclaiming does
not evidently hinder their being used, when, the truth is, that if due
care was previously taken with the patients, those execrable substitutes
to the fingers need never be used at all.
BUT if these instrumentarians were called to account for their so justly
presumable massacres, what would be their defence? Most certainly not
the truth. One would not own, that in order to attend a richer patient,
or perhaps to return to his bottle, he had recourse to his fatal
instruments, to make the quicker riddance or _effectual_ dispatch;
another would not confess, that he employed them purely because his fund
of _patience_ was exhausted; some would not care to allow, that they
used them purely on the scheme of trying experiments; and none of them
would, you may be sure, plead guilty of ignorance of better and more
salutary methods. No! their wilful error, or that want of skill, they
would be sure to conceal under the cloud of hard words and scientific
jargon, in which they would dress up their respective cases, and insult
the ignorance of those silly good women, who _know_ no _better_ than to
deliver those of their own sex with the help of their fingers and hands,
and who are so undextrous, as to have no notion of putting them to such
unnecessary tortures and risks, as are inseparable from the use of those
iron and steel instruments. Instruments which rarely fail of destroying
the child, or at least cruelly wounding it, and never but injure the
mother, not only in those exquisitely tender-textured parts, where they
are so blindly and ungovernably introduced; but in the often
irrecoverable dilatations of the external orifice, the vagina, and
especially the _fourchette_ or _frænum labiorum_, all which, in general,
they considerably damage: and always originally without necessity. For
if through carelessness, if through an impatience, so much more natural
to men than to women, in a case and position of this nature; if through
ignorance of the critical minute of extraction, the occasion of
operating with the fingers has _not_ been _lapsed_, any recourse to
instruments is perfectly unnecessary, and they will hardly ever succeed
where the subject is inaccessible to the fingers, without having the
worst of consequences to dread from them both to mother and child.
Nothing then can be worse for a man-midwife, than to be tempted to any
negligence, to any precipitation, to any ostentation, in short, of
expedition or of superiority of skill to that of the women, by his
having those instruments at hands, the doing without which is at once so
much better and safer, even by the confession of those who use them
nevertheless.
HOW greatly then is the ignorance of the midwives preferable to _such_
an use, as the male-practitioners commonly make of that deep learning of
theirs, which only misleads them, at the expence of humanity! How
over-compensated is that want of theoretical knowledge, so unjustly
reproached to women, since they profess a sufficiency even of that
knowledge; how over-compensated, I say, is that supposed want, by that
instinctive keenness of apprehension, and ready dexterity of theirs in
the manual operation, which in them is a pure gift of nature, and to
which not the utmost efforts of art or experience can ever make the men
arrive, for reasons which will be made clearly appear in the two
following considerations.
FIRST, It will hardly be denied, that the art of midwifery requires a
regular training or education for it. The season of that education can
only be that of youth. And surely in that season precisely, the very
nature of the study excludes those of the male-sex, at the same time,
that there is nothing in it indecent or improper for the females
destined to that profession. This proposition will be more clearly
illustrated, by an appeal to the reader’s own sense and reason upon what
passes, and must necessarily pass in those hospitals for the reception
of lying-in women, where those of the male-sex are allowed to attend for
the sake of learning the profession.
THIS Charity is indeed founded upon specious motives, but the conduct of
it would make humanity shudder, even where no violence is expressly
intended to humanity; and without the least forced or uncharitable
conclusion, may serve to demonstrate the impropriety of attempting to
throw the practical part of midwifery into the hands of
male-practitioners, the implicit consequence of which must be the
exclusion of the midwives, without any direct and formal exclusion of
them, but purely from the discouragement that will hinder any good and
able ones being formed in future. And that no thoroughgood men-midwives,
except perhaps two or three extraordinary men in a whole nation, can
ever be formed, the procedure at the lying-in hospitals, open to
men-pupils, such as it must of all necessity be from the nature of the
thing itself, without any the least reproach herein meant to the worthy
managers, will convince all who will make an unprejudiced use of their
judgment.
WE will then suppose a lying-in hospital, in which, for the sake of
training up _men_ to the profession of mid_wives_, there are young
pupils of the male-sex admitted to attend and learn the practical and
manual part of the business. To obtain this end, we will not say that
women of virtue and character are subjected to the inspection and
palpation of a set of youths, who perhaps pay largely for their
privilege of attendance; but we will grant, that the objects of this
charity are entirely women, who, though they may have unfortunately
forfeited their right to virtue, cannot however have lost their claim to
the protection of that humanity, which, besides the great and most
political attention due to population, pays especially a tender regard
to the innocent burthen, though of a guilty mother. Yet among these
wretched victims, there may be not a few who, if they were not even to
deserve more compassion than blame, for particular circumstances of
their ruin, in which the villainy of men has often a much greater share
than female frailty itself, cannot surely deserve that all traces of
modesty, or natural remains of regard for it, should be utterly
eradicated by that hard necessity of theirs to accept of a charity, by
which they must be abandoned up to the researches of a set of young men,
to whose approaches their age and sex must alone give an air of
petulance and wantonness not to be explained away, to the satisfaction
of the poor passive sufferer, by the goodness of the intention. Every
one must be sensible of the dreadful effects such a treatment must have
on the mind of a poor creature in that condition, when the imagination
is known to be the most weak, and susceptible of the most dangerous
impressions. At that critical time, amidst all the terrors and
apprehensions inseparable from her situation, she is moreover exposed to
the greatest indignity that can be well imagined, that of serving for a
pillar of manage to break young men into the exercise of that most
unmanly profession. Nay, that very circumstance of the use she is put
to, which she is in fact to consider as a kind of valuable consideration
by her paid for the relief afforded her, and which in that light can
scarce be called a charity; that very circumstance, I say, of her
submission, at all calls, and upon all pretences of the pupils, being
accounted for to her by the good intention of it, will yet hardly pass
on a wretched, frightened, harrassed woman, who, whatever may be said to
procure her tame acquiescence, can scarcely, if she has a spark of
female modesty left in her, be reconciled to the grossness of such
usage, whether she considers herself as the butt of wantonness, or the
victim of experiments, or perhaps of both the one and the other. It is
well if she is defended by her ignorance from any idea of those dreadful
instruments, of the having practices tried upon her with which, her
circumstances might but too reasonably render her apprehensive, since a
needless resort to them may be too often presumed in the course of
practice, where the men are even paid for their assistence. These the
men-midwives may possibly indeed conceal from the sight of their
patients, but I defy him to conceal them from their wounded imagination,
if they are not wholly ignorant or can think at all.
YET in pure justice to all parties it should be observed, that, besides
many other points to be learned only by ocular inspection and manual
palpation, of which no theory by book or precepts can convey
satisfactory or adequate notions, that great and essential point in our
profession, a skill in what we call the _Touching_, is not to be
acquired without a frequent habit of recourse to the sexual parts whence
the indications are taken. And in this nothing but personal experience
can perfect the practitioner. But this admitted, only proves the more
clearly the utter impropriety of men addicting themselves to this
occupation. For, once more, most certainly the season of acquiring the
nicety of that faculty of _Touching_, besides other requisites in the
art, is for obvious reasons that of youth. Now let any one figure to
himself boys or young men, running at every hour, and exercising a kind
of cruel assault on those bodies of the unfortunate females, upon which
they are to learn their practice. But will they learn it by this means?
It is much to be doubted. It may perhaps be granted, that men of a
certain age, men past the slippery season of youth, may claim the
benefit of exemption from impressions of sensuality, by objects to which
custom has familiarized them. But, in good faith, can this be hoped or
expected in the ungovernable fervor of youth? Can such a stoic
insensibility be imagined in a boy or young man, as that he can direct
such his researches by pawing and grabbling to the end of instruction
only? Must not those researches, humanly speaking, be made in such a
disorder of the senses, as to exclude the cool spirit of learning and
improvement? May he not lose himself, and yet not find what was the
occasion of losing himself? In short, granted, though it is surely hard
to grant, that the wretched women, admitted to this so falsely called
Charity, may not deserve much tender consideration; but in what can the
poor young pupils have deserved so ill of their parents or guardians, as
to be thus exposed to temptations so shockingly indecent? What father,
what mother, what considerate relation can paint to himself a child, or
charge of his, at an age so incapable of resisting the power of sensual
objects, as is that of youth, employed in exploring such arcanums, and
exploring them too in vain? It is surely easier to guess the natural
consequences, than to defend either the subjecting youths to them, or
the hoping any good from the subjecting them. In short, even Dr.
Smellie’s doll is a more laudable method of instruction.
BUT besides this reason taken from the moral impossibility of laying a
timely foundation of practical knowledge in the male-sex, for preferring
women under the false charge of ignorance, to the so unconsequentially
boasted learning of the men, there remains a yet stronger argument
against the male-practitioners: an argument furnished by nature herself,
and of the which, every impartial reader’s own feelings will in course
render himself the judge.
NATURE has to all animals, from the man down to the lowest insect, to
all vegetables, from the cedar to the hyssop, to all created beings, in
short gives what is respectfully necessary for them. Nor can it without
the grossest absurdity be imagined, that this tender universal parent,
or call her by a yet more sacred name, the divine providence, would have
failed women in a point of so great importance to them, as that of the
ability to assist one another, in lying-in, at the same time, that she
has given them so strong and so reasonable a sympathy for those of their
sex in that condition? Can it be thought that nature, so vigilant, so
attentive, to the production of fresh generations, through all beings,
should have been deficient or indifferent as to women, her favourite
work, the friend, the ornament of human kind? And so she must have been,
if she had left her in the necessity of recourse to others than those of
her own sex, in whom there exists so sensibly a superior aptitude for
tending, nursing, comforting and relieving the sick, that even the men
themselves, in their exigences of infirmities, can hardly do without
them. But to say the truth, and as I have before remarked, nature has
been even liberal in her accomplishments of those of the female sex for
this office. Not content with giving them a heart strong imprinted with
a particular sympathy for their own sex, on this occasion, a sympathy,
which for its tenderness, has some resemblance or affinity to the
instinctive love or _storge_ that parents have for their children; she
has also bestowed on them a particular talent, both for the manual
function in the delivery of women, and for all the concomitant
requisites of their aid during the time of their lying-in: a talent in
short, which may even be felt, without the necessity of definition or
proof, to be superior to any possible attainment of the men in that art,
though they should have sacrificed hecatombs of pregnant rabbits, or
have brooded over thousands of coveys of eggs in their search of
excellence in it. To say nothing of a certain softness, flexibility, and
dexterity of hand, palpably denied to the men, there is, both in the
management of the manual operation, and in the attendance due on those
occasions, a quality in which the women, generally speaking, excel the
men, and that is, patience, a quality more essential, more indispensable
than can well be imagined. For on patience it is, that the salvation of
both mother and child often depend; whether that patience is considered
in the so needful point of predisposing the passages, or of waiting,
without however over-waiting, the critical efforts of nature in the
expulsion of her burden. Now nothing is more certain, than that nature,
who to woman has in general given all that vivacity and quickness of
spirit, which seems incompatible with the phlegmatic quality of
patience, has, as if she had purposely meant an exception favourable to
her darling end, the propagation of beings, especially the human one,
bestowed on the female sex, such a remarkable assiduity and diligence in
aid of women’s labors, as are rarely to be seen in men, and when seen,
appear rather forced than naturally constitutional to them. Women, in
those cases, have more bowels for women: they feel for those of their
own sex so much, that that feeling operates in them like an irresistible
instinct, both in favor of the pregnant mother and of the child. Thence
it is, that a woman-practitioner will employ, without stint, or
remission, all that is necessary to predispose the passages, for the
least pain, and the greater safety; she will patiently, even to sixteen,
to eighteen hours, where an extraordinary case requires so extraordinary
a length of time, keep her hands fixedly employed in reducing and
preserving the uterus in a due position, so as that she may not lapse
the critical favorable moment of extraction, or of assisting the
expulsive effort of nature: and what man is there, can it be imagined,
would have endurance enough to remain so long in a posture, the very
image of which, in one of his sex, is so nauseating and so revolting, to
say nothing of the want of that pliability and dexterity of management
of the fingers, on those occasions, so necessary, and so uncommon in the
men, especially in that very age, when their practice should be supposed
the greatest.
IT is then in those cases where nature is slow, as she sometimes is, in
her operation, and often so, for the greater good of the patient, so
conformed perhaps, that a quicker expulsion would only destroy her, that
the midwife, not only uses all patience consistent with safety of life
to the mother especially, but inculcates patience to her suffering
charge. Whereas _the men_, from their natural impatience, or from
whatever other motives their precipitation may arise, having those
infernal iron and steel instruments at hand, are but too often tempted
to make use of them, not only without necessity, but against all the
indications of nature, pleading for a just indulgence to her of her own
time in her own work. In vain then do too many of them declaim as loudly
as can be wished, or as the thing deserves, against all recourse to
instruments, but in extremities which, they pretend, justify them. In
the first place, those extremities are often the fault of deficient and
unskilful practice. The precious moments of the assistence due to nature
have been lapsed, or there has been some failure of preliminary
treatment; or what is worse yet, extremities are rashly taken for
granted when they are not existing.
HERE, in the history of one single woman, I give the history probably of
thousands.
A HEALTHY woman, about twenty five years of age, and remarkably robust,
was in labor of her second child. Her first had come in that natural
smooth way, as had given the same man-midwife, who was now to lay her
again, not the least trouble, as often happens. In this second labor,
however, the head of the child stuck in the passage; and was so far
advanced, that the Doctor told her, whether in jest or earnest I cannot
say, that he could discern the color of its hair. Her pain, though
extremely great, had not however hindered her observing the Doctor
rummaging for his instruments; her frightful apprehension, of which, she
had all the reason to imagine, did not a little contribute to retard her
throws. She taxed him with his intention to use them, and he did not
deny it. Upon this she used the most moving fervorous entreaties for a
respite of execution; but all in vain; he told her, with a resolute
tone, that he knew surely better what was for her good than she did,
that he had even already waited longer than he could justify; and that
her life was absolutely desperate if the child was not instantly
extracted, of the which being dead, he was sure from many incontestable
symptoms. Her thorough confidence in a man, whom she had often heard
declaim vehemently against the use of instruments unless in extremities,
and which she understood in the most literal sense, without considering,
or perhaps knowing that, on too many occasions, nothing is so different
as words and actions; her thorough confidence in him, I say, joined to a
natural love of life, and to her present feelings of exquisite pain,
determined her to an acquiescence. The fatal instrument was struck into
the brain-pan of the child, who at the instant gave the lie to the first
part of the Doctor’s asseveration as to its death, by such a strong kick
inwards as had almost killed her, and convinced her not only of its
being alive but lively. This did not, you may be sure, add to her belief
of the second part of his averment, that waiting any longer for the
operation of nature, would infallibly have been her death. It might be
so: yet surely there are strong reasons for concluding, that a little
more patience might have saved a fine boy, and yet not have destroyed,
or even hazarded the destroying the mother, whose life is certainly the
preferable object. But how cruel to state the dreadful alternative where
it does not exist! And how easy, in the presumption of that alternative,
to extort the dreadful consent from a weak woman, yet more weakened by
her condition, and naturally determined by her present feelings, to
embrace the appearance of an immediate relief, presented to her in the
form of salvation of life! However, scenes similar or a-kin to this,
may, without breach of charity, be presumed too frequent, especially
under those superficial men-midwives, whom the facility of forming, in
the manner they are generally formed, renders so suspicious as to their
ability, and who for so many reasons, both of nature and interest, are
but too liable to the murderous want of that patience, for which the
women are but the more remarkable in this case, for their not being
perhaps so capable of it in any other. But here their duty is even their
nature; as if in so capital a point, she would trust it to nothing but
herself.
IF it should be here to this objected that the women may, through that
very spirit of patience, wait too long, or overstay the time of saving
the patients life, for want of calling in proper assistence; I have
already implicitly obviated this objection, by remarking before, that a
true thorough midwife, from her quickness of apprehension, and knowledge
of the danger, will ever be readier to call in the assistence and advice
of a physician, than the common men-midwives, who are ever in proportion
to their ignorance the more rash, the more fearless, and consequently
averse to calling in that help, of which they will be ashamed to confess
their want, and thus cruelly, though with impunity, lose the opportunity
of others endeavouring at least to repair those damages, of which
themselves are oftenest the authors. Now a midwife has no such shame;
she pretends to no extraordinary skill in physic or surgery; she knows
her art, and will not presume to transgress its bounds; she would think
herself accountable if she did: and even that very tenderness and
sensibility, upon which nature has founded her patience, will make her
cautious how she pushes that patience too far. She may easily see, feel
and discern those cases in which nature calls the physician in aid to
the midwife; nature, who seems to have placed such boundaries between
those professions, as nothing but interest, presumption, or ignorance of
nature, could ever render their union in one person supposable: tho’ the
quality of physician may not indeed exclude that of the surgeon, but
rather implies, at least, the theory of surgery. For I presume anatomy
is the great basis of true rational physic, though it can very little
assist practical midwifery, which depends so much upon purely manual
operation, and needs only a sufficient general idea of the structure of
the sexual parts in woman, the conceptacle, and passages of the
delivery.
THIS is so true, that any impartial observer of the male and female
practitioners in midwifery, will easily distinguish the characteristic
difference of the sexes, in their respective manner of operation.
IN the men, with all their boasted erudition, you cannot but discern a
certain, clumsy untowardly stiffness, an unaffectionate perfunctory air,
an ungainly management, that plainly prove it to be an acquisition of
art, or rather the rickety production of interest begot upon art.
IN women, with all their supposed ignorance, you may observe a certain
shrewd vivacity, a grace of ease, a handiness of performance, and
especially a kind of unction of the heart, that all evidently
demonstrate this talent in them to be a genuine gift of nature, which
more than compensates what she is supposed to have refused them, in
depth of study, though even of that they are not so unsusceptible, as
some men detractingly think; and in midwifery, most certainly they
attain all that they need of learning to perfect them, with a facility
the greater for nature, having collaterally endowed them with an
organization of head, heart and hand, obviously adapting them to this
her most capital mystery. This will be denied by none who have any
regard for truth, and who do them justice, as to the keenness of their
apprehension, as to that simpathizing sensibility which supplies them
with the needful fund of patience, and tender attention; and as to that
peculiar suppleness of the fingers, as well as slight of hand, in a
function which rather exacts a kind of knack or dexterity, than mere
strength, of which they have also a competency. Nor can it be quite
without weight, that the midwives, besides their personal experience,
being sometimes themselves the mothers of children, have a kind of
intuitive guide within themselves, the original organ of conception,
itself pregnant, in more cases than that, with a strong instinctive
influence on the mind and actions of the sex; an influence not the less
certainly existing, for its being undefinable and unaccountable, even to
the greatest anatomists[4].
THE men, it will be said, have many or all of these qualifications,
except indeed the last. Granted that they have: but how very few are
there of the men that possess the most essential ones to a degree
comparable to that of the women: or rather not so imperfectly, as that
all their boasted skill in literary theory and anatomy, cannot
supplement or atone for the deficiency? Nor theory, nor all the books
that ever were written on that subject from the divine Hippocrates, who
understood so much of physic, and so little of midwifery, down to Dr.
Smellie, who is so great a man in both, will ever amount to so much as
the practical experience of a regular bred midwife.
AS to that superior skill of the men in anatomy which is sounded so
high, against the women, I shall not imitate the men in their want of
candor towards the female-sex in their availing themselves of false
arguments. I will not then take the benefit of the slight opinion which
Celsus and Galen had of the depths of anatomy; they who contented
themselves with a gross superficial notion of the principal viscera. I
will not even desire to countenance that contempt by the example of that
great philosopher Mr. Lock, the intimate friend, and even the counsellor
of the British Esculapius Sydenham, who paid a great deference to his
physical knowledge; and yet this very Mr. Lock wrote an ingenious
treatise (though not published by him) upon the insignificance of the
refinements of anatomy in the practice of physic. Neither will I here
insist on the absurdities into which even the greatest anatomists have
fallen; as for example, _Pecquet_, the famous discoverer of the thoracic
duct in the human body, who nevertheless adopted so extravagant a
notion, as that digestion of food ought not to be promoted by exercise,
but by drinking spirituous liquors, a practice to which himself fell a
victim, dying suddenly at the anatomical theatre. It is only for those
who have a false cause to defend to shut their eyes against those truths
which seem against them. Those on the contrary who defend purely the
truth, know that one truth cannot hurt or exclude another truth, and
that all truths may very well coexist. It may be true that anatomy,
though it does not give the nature of the elementary composition of
parts intrinsic and too minute for the human sense, since a new incision
only presents a new surface, much conduces however to ground the student
in mechanical principles of great assistence to him in practice, of
which they are doubtless the most solid foundation: yet that truth is
not incompatible with another quite as much a truth, that midwifery can
have no occasion but for a general notion of the configuration of those
parts upon which it is exercised. A midwife, for example, may be a very
safe and a very good one, without knowing whether the uterus is a hollow
muscle, or purely a tissue of membranes, arteries and veins: but if that
ascertainment is necessary, she must wait for it till the anatomists
have settled among them that point, which, like many other capital
points of anatomy, is not however yet done. In short, once more, a woman
in labor requires a midwife to lay her, not an anatomist to dissect her,
or read lectures over the corpse, he will be most likely to make of her,
if he depends more on the refinements of anatomy, than on the dexterity
of hand, and the suggestions of practical experience and common sense.
IF then, there are who can examine things fairly and with a sincere
desire of determining according to the preponderance of reason, they
cannot but on their own sense of nature, on their own feelings, in
short, discern that no ignorance, of which the women are
undistinguishingly taxed, can be an argument for the men’s supplanting
them in the practice of midwifery, on the strength of that superiority
of their learning, so rarely not perfectly superfluous, and often
dangerous, if not even destructive both to mother and child. Consult
nature, and her but too much despised oracle common sense; consult even
the writings of the men-midwives themselves, and the resulting decision
will be, that great reason there is to believe, that the operation of
the men-practitioners and instrumentarians puts more women and infants
to cruel and torturous deaths, in the few countries where they are
received, than the ignorance of the midwives in all those countries put
together where the men-practitioners are not yet admitted, and where,
for the good of mankind, it is to be hoped they never will.
I HAVE here said few countries have hitherto countenanced men-midwives.
That I presume is too notorious to require proof: for even those Saracen
or Arabian physicians, Avicen, Rhazes, &c. who, by the by, are little
more than servile translators or copists of the Grecian ones, wrote only
theoretically in quality of physicians; for it does not appear that they
ever practised midwifery themselves, nor ever got the practice of it by
men introduced into their countries. Among the Orientals there is no
such being known as a man-midwife; that refinement of real barbarism,
under the specious pretext of humanity, is happily unknown to them. But
if it should be said, that the jealousy so constitutional to the
inhabitants of the warmer climes, has a share in the exclusion of
men-practitioners; the women have, at least in that point, a weakness to
thank for its production to them of so great a good, as the greater
safety of their persons and children, in that capital emergency of their
lying-in. For, after all, the art of midwifery is, in the hands of men,
like certain plants, which, by dint of a forcing culture, exhibit more
of florish, or a broader expansion; but besides ever retaining a certain
exotic appearance, they never come up to the virtue of those
spontaneously growing in the full vigor of a soil of nature’s own choice
for them. Art may often indeed improve nature, but can never be a
supplement to her, where she is essentially wanting. Deep learning may,
in very extraordinary cases perhaps, repair the errors, or assist the
deficiencies of the manual function, but the deepest learning will never
bestow the manual function, nor indeed can in the same person exist, but
at the expence of the manual function, which must have been in some
measure neglected for it. And yet the greatest practical skill that any
man can with the utmost labor and experience acquire, will hardly ever
equal the excellence in it of the women, Great Nature’s chosen
instruments for this work: an excellence by them attained with scarce
any learning at all, or at least of that abstruse theoretical sort, on
which the men make their superiority principally depend.
BUT that I may not herein be taxed of maintaining any thing that has
only the air of a paradox, or of begging the question, I shall
implicitly, in the course of my answer to the following objection,
endeavor to remove any remaining doubt on this head.
OBJECTION the Eleventh.
IN like manner, as there are particular parts of the human body which
have their appropriate undertakers or protectors under their proper
distinctive names, as oculists, dentists, and corn-cutters, who by
making respectively one part their particular care and study, arrive at
a greater perfection, at least in the practical operations on it, than
regular physicians or surgeons, whose object is the whole fabric; Why,
by parity of reasoning, should not the men-practitioners in midwifery be
preferable to the midwives, since a man has to his manual function
superadded a theory superior to that of the women, who, it is confessed,
stand sometime in need of calling in the physician to their assistence?
As a man then will have laid in a stock of medical knowledge, peculiarly
adapted to the exigencies and disorders incident to women during their
pregnancy and lying-in, he must consequently excel the midwife, or the
physician singly considered; he who with so much greater convenience
will have united in one person both their faculties, besides that of the
surgeon.