THIS only proves, what none in their senses will deny, that the greater
part of the cases of labor are so mild, that not even that faultiness of
the men-practitioners, which is palpably owing to an incurable
imperfection of Nature, not, in short, all that is bungling or deficient
in their preliminary disposition and manual operation, can absolutely
frustrate the kindness of that Nature, of which these intruders are not
ashamed of assuming the honor. But that inference of the men in favor of
themselves is as ridiculous as it is false. In those cases of labor,
which are much the less frequent, and require no extraordinary
assistence, the utmost of the real merit of these bunglers is only of
the negative kind: that is to say, they have not destroyed the mother
nor the child; and indeed, every thing considered, great is the praise
to them thereof. It is not always, even in naturally easy labors, that
the women who employ men to lay them have not a harder bargain of them.
BUT even in these propitious labors, the mischief done to a lying-in
woman, by employing of a man to the exclusion of a midwife, is not a
small one, if pain is an evil, and the lessening that evil a desirable
good. For certainly there can hardly be a case of lying-in supposed, in
which some _labor-pains_ are not felt. The bringing forth children in
pain, stands hitherto the irreversible decree of nature, from which few
women can promise themselves a total exemption. But these pains, if they
cannot be entirely spared, to the lying-in woman, will always admit of
actual or preventive alleviation. That alleviation can be no
inconsiderable object to women, who are by their nature so tender and so
impatient of pain. Even then in the prospect and presence of the very
gentlest labors, there are two natural points to be respectively
attended to. The one is the predisposition of every thing, according to
art, so as to render the expected labor-pains as moderate as possible.
The second is in the manual function, at the actual crisis of the
delivery. Now, in both these points, for reasons above-deduced of the
superior aptitude in women derived to them from Nature herself, a woman
may reasonably depend not only on a more simpathizing cherishment, but a
more efficacious assistence from those of her own sex. There are a
thousand little tender attentions suggested by nature, and improved by
experience, that a midwife can employ both preventively and actually to
the mitigation of her charge’s pain; attentions which, if even they ever
entered into a man-midwife’s head, could not be accepted but with
repugnance, I will not say only by a modest woman, but by any woman at
all. And the truth is, that there can be few men in the world, but what,
the more tender lovers they are of the women, but must be only the more
disgusted, the more impatient of the midwife’s preparatory part of her
office, which is however the most important one, both as to the
prevention of pain, and to the safety of the delivery.
BUT even where those preparatory offices have been omitted, or at best
perfunctorily performed by a man-midwife, and where the actual function
in the crisis of labor has been deficient, or at best indifferent, the
labor may still have proceeded, and the patient delivered with only more
pain, than she would probably have suffered under a good midwife’s
hands. What follows then? Why this; that the patient in the transport of
joy at her delivery from pains which are hardly ever but great, even
though much less than her fear had magnified them to her; instead of
gratitude to that Nature, which can constitute to her only a vague
object of the mind, her weak imagination gives to the assistent
man-midwife, a more palpable being, as he is of flesh and blood, the
merit of a deliverance, in which he had most probably no other share,
than its being his fault that it was not yet less painful than she has
found it. But this is not at all. What sounds towards a paradox, and yet
is strictly true, is, that the more pain the patient has endured,
through the man-midwife’s fault, the greater will her gratitude be to
him. The reason is as obvious as it is natural. Herself not knowing, nor
having perhaps any idea of what ought to have been done for her more
perfect relief, she will have no conception that the man has omitted any
thing: she will give him credit for what he has _appeared_ to do for
her; and measure her sense of acknowledgement by the pain from which she
will suppose he has helped to rid her; and in her joy at her delivery
would think it even an ingratitude to listen to suggestions from others,
or even from herself, that should tend to diminish, explain away, or may
be reduced to less than nothing, the benefit she so vainly imagines was
his work.
YET nothing is more true, nor indeed more likely to be true, than that
besides the natural pains of labor not having been obviated by a due
preventive method of assuagement; besides their having been unskilfully
attended to in the article of the delivery, through the natural
unhandiness of the men-midwives, it does not unrarely happen, that their
defective practice, not only occasions to the women much greater pains,
but even much greater danger than would probably have been the case, I
will not say if a midwife, but even if Nature had barely been left to
herself, that is to say, if nature had been neither injured by a clumsy
aukward attempt to help her, nor injudiciously interrupted, nor
prematurely forced or cruelly hurried. The patient is however delivered,
and delivered so that, if she was better informed, or less blinded with
joy, instead if thanking the operator, to whom she attributes her
deliverance, she would have to impute to him all the increase of pain
she had unnecessarily suffered, all the increase of danger of which this
man so thanked was himself the author. Then it is, that even in a
subject so serious, a judicious by-stander might give himself the comedy
of observing the airs of consequence, which an operator assumes for a
woman under his case _not_ losing the life, of which but for him she
would most probably _not_ have been in the least danger. Thus a man,
whose all of merit well weighed, is no more than not having been able to
consummate the destruction of mother and child, in spite of the kindness
of nature, shall for that negative merit be allowed the positive one of
having performed wonders of art. Then it is that the mother naturally in
a rapture of joy at her deliverance, in which she never remembers but
with a gratitude, of which she only mistakes the object, by paying to
the operator, what in fact was due to nature; then it is, I say, that
the mother, father or parties concerned, for want of making due
allowances in a point they are so excusable for not understanding,
cordially join the self-applause of the man-midwife. Nor does it
unfrequently happen, that one of these instrumentarians, after an
operation, for which he deserves the severest censure, and of which,
whatever necessity he had to plead was originally owing to his own
unskilfulness or omission, shall strut about the room, and florishing
his butcher’s _steel_, sing an _Io Peean_ to himself, “_for that his
victorious art had saved nature as it were by enchantment_”[11]. Then it
is, that in full chorus the deluded parties, in the innocence of their
heads and hearts, hold up their hands to heaven, and piously exclaim,
“_what a narrow escape the patient had, thanks to the learned Dr. and
what a mercy it was she had not been trusted to such an ignorant
creature as a midwife must be_.”
THIS folly has even sometimes gone so far, that when a woman has,
through a man-midwife’s mispractice, suffered perhaps a wrong, so deep
as to be disqualified for ever after for being a mother, or had a fine
child, literally speaking, murdered (_secundum artem_ indeed) he has,
what with scientific jargon, through the cloud of which it was
impossible for persons unversed in the matter to discern the truth, what
with an air of importance, and what with especially her own weak
prepossession in favor of the superiority of men to women-practitioners,
known how to impose on her the most atrocious injury for so great a
service as that of saving life is for ever held. The deceived patient
then thinks she cannot thank him too much, nor reward him sufficiently
for what he could be scarce punished enough, if proportionably to the
mischief he had done; and to which his mis-representations have perhaps
even made herself innocently an accomplice.
THIS indeed is easily to be accounted for. A pregnant woman must
especially, in the moment of her labor-pains, think herself too much in
the power of the operator, to whom she has trusted herself, to dispute
his judgment. She may even, and that is probably oftenest the case, have
too good an opinion of it, to dispute it. Her labor is severe, and, as
before observed, severe, or at least the more so, very likely from some
fault of his. Her deliverance lingers; Nature, from some vice of
conformation, or defect of art in her assistent, appears faint, remiss,
insufficient, in short, in her expulsive efforts; in the mean time, the
pains of the patient grow more and more intense and intolerable: the
man-midwife, either perplexed or impatient, or not knowing what better
to do, has recourse to those fatal instruments, with which the odds are
so great, that he will gall, bruise, or irreparably wound the child, or
the mother[12]. In some cases indeed, he may take the dreadful advantage
of the mother’s agonies of pain, to use those instruments, and do her a
mischief she may not just then feel, from the pain of the operation
being absorbed in the greater one; to use them, I say, unobserved by
her[13].
BUT where the exigency appears yet greater, where, in short, the
operator imagines, as he too often imagines such an extremity where it
does not exist, as that either the mother or the child must perish, it
is his maxim, and certainly a very just one, to consider the mother’s
safety, as the preferable object. Of this preference then he makes a
merit, so much the more acceptable to the mother for her own
self-preservation being so palpably concerned, and so much the less
disputable for her not knowing but he may be in the right, as to the
reality of the fatal dilemma. In such a doubt, if nature takes the part
of the child’s life, which is at stake in the decision, she also much
more strongly and reasonably takes the part of the mother’s own
existence in the mother’s own breast. She cannot then deny the
premisses, of which she is no judge, when the inference is not only in
favor of her life, but even a very just one upon the admission of those
premisses. The temptation also of a quick riddance from a violent state
of pain, is too great a temptation for a weak woman, overpowered with
her actual feelings in that rack of nature, to resist: she acquiesces
then, or perhaps her husband, her friends, equally ignorant with herself
of the truth of things, and duly simpathizing with her in her impatience
of her longer suffering, even virtuously, even piously acquiesce in the
recourse to these instruments, which are so sure of destroying the
child, and hardly ever fail of doing the mother great and sometimes
irreparable mischief.
WHEN then the child has been destroyed, the mother damaged; in
satisfaction for all this tragic-work, what have you but perhaps the
learned Doctor’s assertion, “[14]_that if this force had not been used,
the mother must have been lost as well as the child_.”
NOW granting what is the utmost that candor can be expected to grant,
that in but the doubt of the mother’s life, it is right to sacrifice the
life of the child to that doubt, and much more to the certainty of the
mother’s life not to be otherwise saved, than by these fatal
instruments, I beg and entreat all fathers and mothers, or who are
likely to be so, to consider with themselves whether:
IN the first place, an experienced midwife is not more likely to prevent
such an extremity by previous management, proper anticipations, and
actual handiness during the labor-pains, than the aukward
man-practitioner (as most of them evidently are) who must, naturally
speaking, be so much her inferior in those points of her art, which
conduce essentially to the smoothing the way for, and effectuating a
delivery; and from the defect of which points that necessity which, is
pleaded of a recourse to instruments, originally takes its rise. So that
in fact they who are the authors of the danger, pretend to remove it,
and how? by an evil only inferior to death itself, from which however
those are not always safe, to whose safety so much is sacrificed in
vain.
IN the next place, it may well be recommended to consideration, whether,
as the _common methods_[15] confessedly allowed by the men-midwives to
be the _preferable_ ones, since the recourse to instruments is not even
by them _allowed_, until the _common methods_ are exhausted, there is
not great reason, without breach of charity, to imagine that the natural
unfitness of the men for the _common methods_ does not determine
especially the common men-midwives to an over-hasty recourse to the
_extraordinary_ ones, and make them see very _dangerous symptoms_, where
they are no better than phantoms of their own creation; so that by their
eagerness to embrace them for an excuse, they lose to the patient that
benefit of patience in general, which Dr. Smellie himself allows in a
particular case[16]. To which patience the midwives are so much more
inclined than the men, as indeed they may well be, since, should that
even be exhausted, they have no instruments to fly to for the abridgment
of a labor: and where they understand their business, not only every
thing is best done without them, but the want of them is prevented.
BUT besides the common motive of impatience in the men-practitioners for
resorting to that dangerous expedient of making short work, of which the
women are unhappily incapable[17], or at least which the good artists
among them hold in the contempt and detestation it deserves; are there
no other motives from which recourse may be had to the instruments? I
have hinted at some: but as the matter is of infinite importance, from
the use made of these instruments, in introducing men into the practice
of an art so appropriated to the women, it cannot but be of service even
to the public, to discuss the justice at least of some of those hints,
and examine whether there is any farther foundation for my fears, that
the precipitancy of the men in their resorting to instruments, or to the
prematurely forcing a delivery, to the utmost danger if both mother and
child, whether, in short, the pretence of extremities may not, in some
cases, have even other causes, than a natural incapacity for the _common
method_, an ignorance of better practice, or their impatience.
I HAVE before remarked what I here repeat, and repeat it without the
least apprehension of being justly taxed with breach of charity, that a
mere sordid view of lucre, of supplementing, in short, deficiencies of
success in other professions, was originally the foundation in this
country of that novel sect of men-midwives, which we have in our days
seen so much multiplied. If any can imagine that the instrumentarians,
with their crotchets, their forceps, and the rest of their iron or steel
apparatus, had more in view the relief of the distressed females, from
the dangers to them in the ignorance of the midwives, than they had
their own interest, in the stepping into the place of those they so
injuriously decried; if any, I say, can believe that sheer humanity, and
not sordid gain, was their view, I can only pity a credulity, that must
proceed more from a goodness of the heart, than of the head. But to
whoever will deign to consult his own reason, exercised upon facts and
the nature of things, may easily satisfy himself, that interest, and
interest only, inspired and actuated these intruders into a province so
little made for them, of which there can hardly be a stronger
presumption than the very recommendation of instruments, of which not
one of them but must know the perniciousness, though they make it the
capital handle of the introduction of themselves. Not one of them but
rails at them, and uses them. Now, as I may safely take it for granted,
that interest is at the bottom of this innovation, where that same
interest is the principle, it will hardly be denied me, that it is
generally speaking the leading or the governing one. It is rarely
contented with acting a second part. It often exacts sacrifices, but is
rarely itself one. All the actions and procedure of its votaries take
the tincture of it. Humanity and all the virtuous or tender passions are
either totally excluded, or exist with little or no efficacy in a heart
enslaved by interest.
In virtue of this reasoning, and I should be much more glad of finding
myself mistaken (knowingly I am sure I am not so) than that it should be
but too much verified by matter of fact, I shall here submit a case to
the reader for his own decision on the probability, and I dare swear,
that among the female readers especially, I may chance to have, there
will be more than one, who, on her own personal experience, could attest
the existence of such a case, or at least has the strongest grounds of
presumption of it.
A WOMAN then, lingering in a severe labor, and urged by her pains
naturally to wish the speediest end of them, is yet by another superior
promptership of nature desirous of meriting the sweet name of mother,
and is inclined of herself not to think it over-purchased by a little
more patience. In this crisis, much must depend on the judgment, and
consequently on the advice of the assistent practitioner, male or
female. If a midwife, besides the tenderness constitutional to her sex,
her natural fears for the mother especially, not without a due share of
concern for the child, where there is a possibility of saving it without
too great a risk to the parent, besides the superior execution of her
art in points of the manual function, she is moreover bound in all duty
to see one labor come to its issue before she undertakes another; for
the sake of which, she cannot well, if she would, without instruments,
prematurely force a delivery by such violent, dangerous and so often
destructive means. She will then in course encourage and inspirit her
charge with patience, and use all the blandishments, soothing methods
imaginable to comfort, relieve, and strengthen the resolution and spirit
of the lying-in-woman. Now, a man-midwife, _well paid_, will perhaps in
that cold unaffectionate manner, with which a duty that has no
foundation but in interest is ever performed, exhort to endurance that
patient whom his dexterity is insufficient to relieve, that patient
whose pains are perhaps for the greatest part his own fault. But should
he, during some lingering labor, be called elsewhere, to a more rich
employer, or should one from whom he has greater expectations, require
an attendance from him incompatible with his duty to his prior employer,
is not here a temptation to make a quick dispatch with his instruments?
A temptation to which it is at least doubtful whether a man, actuated by
interest, may not be over-inclined to yield. It may even byass him,
without his perceiving it himself. A man’s determining motive, when it
is not of a very justifiable nature, is often skreened even from himself
by a more specious one. Such, in the present case, is the saving the
mother, oftenest by destroying, and sometimes by only galling, bruising,
or maiming the child, when the mother rarely escapes her share of the
suffering. How many mothers have pathetically interceded, and interceded
in vain, for a respite of execution, when the operator has in a
peremptory tone cut short their instances, by telling them in a
magisterial way, that he knew best what to do, and could not answer for
the patient’s life, if the operation was longer delayed! What reply has
a poor woman, weak by nature, oppressed by pain, and subdued by her
prepossession to oppose to such an argument of necessity, of which her
own life appears to be the favored object? What husband, what friends,
but must unhesitatingly subscribe to so just a preference as that of the
mother and the child? Not that I would insinuate here, that such a
dilemma does not sometimes though certainly very rarely exist: but is it
not to be feared, that it is too often rather lightly taken for granted
that it does exist? May it not be presumed, that the instruments are
brought oftener into use than is necessary, for the sake of a dispatch,
of which the child is almost ever the victim, and not unseldom the
mother herself, who is always hurt, and sometimes irreparably damaged?
May it not be justly suspected, that the abuses of Art have occasioned
to many women an appearance of barrenness, from the reality of which
kinder Nature had in fact exempted them?
BUT as if ignorance, inability, impatience, interestedness, were not all
of them sufficient motives for the forcing use of these instruments, Dr.
Smellie has unmeaningly added another, which alone must, to the greatest
number of the men-practitioners, prove a greater excitement than all the
others put together, if it be true, that Vanity has so great a
predominancy over the human heart as it is generally imagined to have.
But let us first quote him: the inference will follow.
“(P. 265.) _at any rate, as_ women _are commonly_ frightened _at the
very_ name _of an_ instrument, _it is adviseable to_ conceal _them as
much as possible_, untill (mind pray that UNTILL) _the_ character _of
the_ operator _is_ established.”
(P. 273.) “_Though the_ forceps _are covered with leather, and_ appear
_so_ simple _and_ innocent, _I have given directions for_ concealing
_them, that_ young practitioners BEFORE _their_ characters _are_ fully
established, _may avoid the calumnies_ and _mis-representations of those
people who are apt to prejudice the ignorant and weak-minded against the
use of any instrument, though never so necessary, in this profession;
and who taking the advantage of unforeseen accidents which may
afterwards happen to the patient, charge the whole misfortune to the_
INNOCENT OPERATOR.”
HERE I appeal to every reader of common-sense, to every reader who knows
any thing of the human heart, whether it can be imagined that any
man-midwife, who is called in to the aid of a lying-in woman, will
choose to appear in the character of a _young practitioner_, or of such
an one, as that his _character_ is not enough _established_ to _dare_ to
use instruments, for fear of after-reflexions. Is not there, if but in
this lesson of the Doctor’s, couched a strong temptation for a
man-practitioner not indeed to produce openly and barefacedly his
apparatus of instruments, but to be very uncautious of concealing them?
Since the reason for concealing them, that of the women being apt to be
frightened at them, stands coupled with another reason, the fittest in
the world to work a contrary effect to both; by piquing the vanity of
the operator to suffer them to be seen, and what is worse yet, to the
using them only that they might be _seen_, especially if to this motive
of ostentation you add, that if these instruments being the very _grand_
and _capital_ point of their imaginary _superiority_ to the
women-practitioners; over whom every occasion of using them seems to the
men a kind of triumph.
BUT while it is to the novices in the art, that Dr. Smellie recommends
more especially the concealment of these same terrifying instruments,
the good Dr. does not seem aware, that an advice much more honest and
humane might be given to the women, for whose _benefit_ the instruments
are supposed to be invented, which is, not to employ _young
practitioners_ or novices, not in short to employ those whose character
was not _fully_ established, since they might, in order to pass for
adepts, or at least for no novices, be too apt to embrace occasions of
florishing those same instruments with less necessity, if possible, than
the _great men_ themselves of the profession.
IN the mean time, this curious injunction to the _young_ practitioners,
while the _old_ ones are by that distinction implicitly allowed more
openness in using the instruments, reminds me of the caution of the
Regent-duke of Orleans, who taking monsieur de St. Albin[18], a natural
son of his, that was in priest’s orders, to task, for some
irregularities, of which certain bishops had complained, said to him in
their presence, “_Sirrah, could not you stay till you were a bishop?_”
BUT whatever may be the motives of recourse to instruments, and there
are other possible ones which I have omitted, certain it is, that in
this nation they are more frequently employed than even in France, where
that pernicious fashion first took birth. And yet in this very nation it
is, that the men-practitioners themselves own, that the less they are
used the better. Now will they, to solve this contradiction of their
practice to their doctrine, plead that the labors of the women here are,
in general, more difficult than they are in France? Common sense and
truth will however furnish a juster solution: men-midwives are more
employed _here_ than in _France_, where the women-practitioners are
still respected, and less driven out of practice, consequently
instruments are less frequently used. For I will not pay the
men-operators of this country so ill a compliment, as to excuse them, by
saying they are less dexterous at the manual function than those of
France, and therefore the more obliged to have recourse to those
instruments, of which they themselves have so ill an opinion, though
indeed not a so thoroughly bad one as they deserve.
IN the mean while they may well proceed triumphing in their career,
notwithstanding all the fatal trips they make in it, while, if they did
not even run it in the dark, they have so much learned dust ready to
throw into the peoples eyes whom it is so much their interest to blind.
No wonder then, that since, in the more severe cases, in the
preternatural labors, they so often receive from well-meaning employers
both pay and thanks for the greatest mischiefs, owing to their errors
both of omission and commission, they should, in the less difficult, and
which are by much the most frequent ones, where no tragic accidents have
happened, have credit given them for a merit, to which their pretentions
are so little examined. For this they are indebted to the overflow of a
gratitude at a loss for a living object and from an impatience of doubt
mistaking that object so grosly, as well as to that same prepossession’s
continuing, from which they were preferably employed. Hence it is, that
one might often hear women, who had not even suffered a little by their
practice, from the want of knowing, that by their practice it was they
did not suffer less, very sincerely say, “_Dr. such an one attended me
in my lying-in —— He delivered me very well._” —— Or, “_I have been lain
for four or more children by a man-midwife, and never had room to
complain._” All which proves no more than what may very well have
happened, that Nature has been too favorable to them, for even the
untoward assistence of a man, in the office of a midwife, entirely to
frustrate her beneficence. I do not here add the weight that _fashion_
throws into the scale of prejudice, reserving to treat of that
separately.
BUT to that conclusion in favor of the men-midwives, from the supposed
superiority of their success to that of the women-practitioners,
contained in the objection I am now answering, I have further to oppose
an argument drawn from _matter of fact_, to which I should imagine it
difficult to find a satisfactory reply. This argument then consists in a
fair appeal to Experience herself.
I HAVE before observed, that in the Hôtel-Dieu at Paris, there are no
men-practitioners suffered, for I do not include the surgeon-major, who
is absolutely no more than an officer for the form-sake. Consequently
there are no instruments ever employed in the delivery of the women
admitted to that hospital. It is true they are extremely well taken care
of; all necessaries are found them by that noble charity; but yet it
cannot be thought, that the same abundance of ease and conveniences can
be afforded, as by those persons, generally speaking, who employ
men-midwives. This distinction I mention for the sake of the allowance
justly to be made in the calculate I am about to propose.
Notwithstanding however the superiority in this point on the side of
men-midwives practice, notwithstanding the grief of mind from various
causes, as well as the bad constitution of the bodies of many of those
indigent wretches, prior to the reception into that hospital,
notwithstanding other easily conceivable disadvantages; notwithstanding
all these, I say, take any given number of patients, delivered purely by
the midwives of that hospital, without the intervention of one
man-practitioner, and especially without instruments, and to that given
number, oppose an equal one of women attended from the first of their
labor to their delivery by the men-midwives, and see on the side of
which sex, in the operators, there will be found the greater number of
those who shall have done well, or suffered least.
I AM the more emboldened to propose such an experiment from my own
certain knowledge. I have seen more than two thousand women delivered
under my eyes, at the Hôtel-Dieu at Paris, some of whose cases must be
readily imagined to have been severe or preternatural ones. Yet all of
them were delivered by our midwives and apprentices without the aid of a
man-practitioner; nor an instrument so much as thought of. And in all
this number I can safely aver, there were but four who died upon their
lying-in; and that not from any fault of the midwife’s art; but one from
the complication of a dropsy, the other three, who were daughters to
honest tradesmen, sunk under the shock of grief and shame at the being
deserted by the men who had brought them into that condition. They died,
in short, of their desire to die. Yet the children all did well.
THIS is a fact that does not require the being believed upon my word.
The known practice at that hospital, and the registers regularly kept,
will attest the truth of this computation. And here, I appeal to every
intelligent reader’s own sense, to his own knowledge of things, whether
it is unfairly presumed, that in the same number of two thousand women,
delivered by the men-practitioners, they could show a roll so innocent,
so free from fatal mischief or damage to their patients, to mother and
to child. Let any parents, or who may hope to be parents, or are
concerned but for the interest of mankind in population, weigh but the
force of this argument, purely drawn from a matter of fact, of which
there can be so few who are not, in some measures, judges enough to
decide upon their own knowledge, or at least on strong grounds of belief
or conjecture. In such a number as two thousand women delivered by the
men-operators, how many, by what I know, and by what many others must
know as well as I, must have perished, or been torn, ruptured,
grievously hurt, or irreparably damaged! How many innocent infants must
have lost their little lives, in proof of that superiority of practice
in the men to the women! Or rather, in proof of that infatuate
credulity, which has prevailed in favour of an innovation so
unauthorized by nature, by common sense, or by experience!
OBJECTION the Thirteenth.
SAY what you will, the fashion will predominate. It is now the fashion
to prefer men-practitioners of midwifery to midwives. You will oppose
the torrent in vain.