ANSWER.

THE conclusion against me that I shall oppose the torrent in vain, is a

very just one. As to myself, I ought to expect that I should oppose it

in vain, if the decision of the public was to turn upon any thing of so

little authority as my private opinion, especially in a point where it

is so justly liable to the suspicion of its being byassed, both by

private interest, and partiality to my own sex. I readily then grant

that my own opinion should go for nothing. But what ought to go for a

great deal is my reader’s own judgment, formed upon his own reason and

knowledge. But that is not all. I have some dependence on Nature and

common sense recovering their rights, from this preference of the

men-midwives which shocks both, being, in truth, nothing more than a

fashion, not even of the growth of this country, but transplanted from a

neighbouring one, whose follies are unhappily so contagious, though for

the most part so despicable. How a few interested men, for want of

business in their own professions, transplanted this baneful exotic

here, where it has met with such undue cherishment has already been

touched upon.

BUT then as this unnatural preference has all the folly and whim of

fashion in it, it may be hoped, that it will also have all the

instability and transitoriness of one. Time that confirms the dictates

of Nature destroys the fictions of opinion. But in points where Nature

is herself attacked or injured, inconveniencies and damages never fail

of following thereon, enough to oppose the duration of them. The numbers

of lying-in women (thanks to beneficent Nature) rather not destroyed

than duly assisted by the men-operators, can neither atone for those who

perish, sometimes the mother, sometimes the child, sometimes both, while

none of them are but sufferers in some degree; nor long blind a public,

that has so much interest not to be imposed upon in a matter so

essential to it, by false pretences, or by an injurious and interested

degradation of the midwives, who at the worst can hardly be so bad as

the very best of the men, in the capital point of their business, the

manual function. The oftenest greater _danger_, and always the greater

_pain_, under men-operators than under the midwives hands will, sooner

or later, determine the parties concerned to open their eyes on their

greatest interest, in a point of such infinite importance to them.

GRANTING then to Fashion all the power it really has, and a greater one

it is, than for the honor of human kind, can well be imagined, still, it

not only has its limits of extension, but duration. It is only for the

truth of Nature to be universal and eternal.

FASHION, it is true, may not only govern people in indifferent matters,

such as dress, furniture, equipage, or so forth, but even in essential,

even in capital ones, such, for example, as is this point of option

between the men-operators and the midwives: it may, in short, exert its

tyranny in many things, one would rather think left better to the

determination of REASON. But then this tyranny cannot well be

long-lived. The evils which such a fashion begets destroy at length

their own parent. No opinion then, as I have before observed, can be

permanent that is not founded on the truth of Nature: but where the

consequences of such an opinion are detrimental to the good of society,

which is the darling object of Nature; that spirit of self-preservation

which she has so manifestly diffused thro’ human kind, will hardly

suffer errors pernicious to it long to subsist. There is no fashion can,

under such objections, long hold out against victorious Nature, who is

sure to revenge the violences offered her.

AND here I even officiously seize on an occasion that rises to me out of

the very bowels, I may say, of my subject, of selecting for one proof of

the danger of adopting innovations offensive to Nature, a point of such

near analogy to midwifery, as that of nursing children, the care of

whom, next to that of the mothers, is the true midwife’s tender

province.

I wish then that those, who too readily admit that this so recent a

fashion of employing men-midwives preferable to female ones, is an

improvement receivable on the foot of its supposed advantage to human

kind, would consider a little the actual consequences of having flown in

the face of Nature with respect to the bringing up young children, in a

way scarce more foreign from her dictates, than that of _men_ delivering

_women_. That women are by Nature herself formed for the office of

aiding women in their lying-in; that they are also formed to bring up

children by the breast, are two parts of their destination by Nature,

which in all ages, and in all countries seem to have born little or no

controversy. Interest has lately invaded both these provinces. With this

difference, that as to the first, that of women supplanted in their

business of delivering women, an active interest has prevailed; as in

that of denying the female breast to children, it is a purely passive

one[19]; and we shall soon see what a dreadful effect this sacrifice of

Nature to interest has produced.

AS to the mischief produced by the other, of the implicitly excluding

the women from midwifery, by the power of prejudice and fashion, it is

not, as yet, of a Nature for obvious reasons quite so susceptible of

proof, though most certainly not the less therefore existent. And that

mischief is palpably owing to the gain which the men-midwives find or

presume in the exercise of that profession. This is the active interest:

that end to which the means give so justly the construction of base and

sordid. The rich are the object of this wretched imposition, which will

probably last so much the longer, for the interest to be found in

imposing upon them.

BUT for the denying the female breast to children; it has not indeed

passed hitherto into a tenet, that children may as well be reared by the

spoon as by the breast, because there is not that prospect of the place

of a _dry-nurse_ being as lucrative as that of a _man-midwife_. If it

was so, I should not dispair of seeing a great he-fellow florishing a

pap-spoon as well as a forceps, or of the public being enlightened by

learned tracts and disputations, stuffed full of Greek and Latin

technical terms, to prove, that water-gruel or scotch-porridge was a

much more healthy aliment for new-born infants than the milk of the

female breast, and that is was safer for a man to dandle a baby than for

an insignificant woman.

AS this unnatural treatment then of children is almost entirely as yet

confined to the very poor, that is to say, to new-born babes thrown upon

the public CHARITY for their SUSTENANCE, the rearing by the spoon is not

yet regularly established as a general _doctrine_, it is only admitted

in PRACTICE! As _proper_ wet-nurses, from the difficulty in procuring

them, might be _dearer_ than dry ones; the _cheapest_ method is

preferred, and forms a kind of passive interest or saving œconomy.

BUT what are the consequences of this violation of Nature, in the

grudging her peculiarly appointed aliment to these poor little

candidates for life? What follows the substituting, for cheapness-sake,

such food as is meant to be afforded them, and is perhaps sometimes even

not given them? Death. Death with all that cruelty of torture that

attends atrophy or inanition. Thus perish these miserable victims to the

false opinion, that the course of Nature can be changed with impunity. I

have said here false opinion only, because, with all the obduracy of

heart that the spirit of interest so notoriously creates, with all the

crimes it so often produces, I cannot think, that such an horror, as the

murder of so many innocents, can be entirely imputed to interest without

ignorance coming in for its share, though interest has doubtless

contributed to the so long continuance of it.

IF that maxim is not a false one, that he who knowingly suffers an

innocent person to perish, and can help it, is actually guilty of

murder: and I prefer here the term of guilty to that of accessary;

because I am told, that where there is guilt of murder, all are in the

eye of equity and law, principals. Ignorance then, of the sure murder of

these innocents by their method of treatment, can be the only plea for

those to whom the national charity had committed the care of them. I

should think too, that even I myself sinned against charity, if I did

not believe, that there is none of those trustees of the poor children,

that would not shudder at the thought, of himself taking an infant up by

the leg and dashing its brains out against the wall. And yet that would

be balmy mercy, the dispatch considered, compared to the lingering

tortures, in which those poor little creatures must expire, in the

common way of parish-nursing. What is certain however is, that Death

would scarce more assuredly be the consequence of the child’s brains

being at once beat out, than of that impropriety of aliment, which in

the mildest construction is owing to an error in opinion or belief, that

any aliment could be salutarily substituted to the one dictated by

Nature.

I HAVE here mentioned barely impropriety, or sometimes negation of

aliment, without allowance for other causes of destruction to those

infants, such as cold, bad air, uncleanliness, neglect of due

attendence, or deficiency, in short, of requisites, which are not to be

expected from the very poorer sort of the people, to whom the rearing of

those infants is generally committed. But that omission of mine is

neither undesigned nor unfair. I presume I shall have the greatest

physicians on my side, in averring, that even new-born babes are endowed

with a surprizing hardiness. Their little seemingly so delicate bodies

bear cold to a degree scarcely credible, but from the commonness of both

observation and practice, that they only thrive the better for

immersions in cold water. Cleanliness, a good air, and attendence, have

doubtless indeed some share in the well-doing of children of that age:

but all together are in no degree of comparison to the importance of

bestowing on children their appropriate aliment. The physical

disquisitions into the reason of this do not belong to me here: nor are

a few instances of infants reared by the spoon any valid justification

for breaking the general rule of Nature, assigning to the female breast

the nutrition of children: of which too there is this salutary

consequence, that in the very act of lactation there is, by Nature,

generated such an indearment of the suckled child to the nurse[20], as

that she who began it perhaps only for hire, finds herself engaged by a

growing affection to supply in some measure the place of the mother to

the orphan or deserted babe. The rearing by the spoon is so far from

inspiring any such dearness, that the innocent infant is considered only

as an embarrassment, of which the quicker the riddance, in the death of

the _brat_, so much the better.

THE opinion, however, that this one of the greatest institutes of Nature

for the preservation of the species, for which she has so admirably

organized the female breast, could be dispensed with in favor of a most

sordid savingness, has alone caused more human sacrifices, to that black

Demon of INTEREST, than probably were ever made to the “grim idol of”

Moloch in the valley of Hinnom, while the cries of the poor children

could not be heard by ears closely stopped up in honor of that infernal

spirit.

BUT if any reader should imagine that I here invent any thing, or that,

in favor of my inference of danger from the case of revolting against

the unalterable institutes of Nature, I have exagerated matters, nothing

will be more easy, nor probably at the same more shocking, than the

procuring himself a proof of the scarce not actual murders I have

mentioned.

THE parish-registers of this great metropolis are, I presume, open for

inspection. There needs but to examine them, to discover the red-letter

catalogue of the armies of innocents that have been put to death under

the management of the charity destined to preserve their life. There

will be found not one but many, even of the most populous parishes,

where for fourteen, twenty, or more years, not one poor babe of the

thousands taken in have escaped the general destruction, and sacrifice

to that inhuman fiend of Hell, _Interest_. Here with what propriety

might Nature borrow from one of her most dutiful children and darling,

the following exclamation,

—— —— ALL _my pretty ones?

Did you say_ ALL! _what_ ALL?

· · · · ·

_I cannot but remember such things were,

That were most_ PRECIOUS _to me_: did Heav’n look on,

_And would not take their part?_ ACCURSED INTEREST,

They were all STRUCK for thee!

This is so rigidly true of some parishes, that if I am not misinformed,

the verification was not long ago made, as to one of them before a court

of justice, of not a single infant having been brought up in the term of

fourteen years. And I could name another, in which, during the course of

above twenty years, ALL, ALL the new-born children that fell under the

administration of the Parish-CHARITY, perished, except one boy, of whom

it is recorded as a prodigy, that he lived till he was five years of

age, when he filled up the number, and died like the rest. Will any one

here say, that this TOTAL mortality was purely accidental?

BUT this can be no wonder to those who know there is such an expression,

even proverbially in use, as that of children being a BURTHEN to the

parish. An expression of which it is hard to pronounce whether it is

more execrable or more silly. But what is so inconsequential as the

spirit, or rather the no-spirit of interest? Children may indeed be a

burthen to private families; and yet for the sweetness of it, how

chearfully is it oftenest born, or with very few extraordinary

exceptions to the general rule? But to a nation, or what is the same

thing, to the lawful representative of the nation, a parish, what can be

on earth a falser light to view children in, than that of a burthen?

What could be so intolerable in the sum to be added to that actually

paid for their being worse than murdered out of hand, to save their

little lives, and bring them up to that age, in which the national

wisdom should have established for them, at once, the means of earning

their likelihood, and of earning it with such beneficial retribution to

their truly mother-country, as should amply reward her for her not

having neglected the duties of humanity towards them? All the good, all

the sensible part of mankind allow, that the true riches of a state, are

in the numerousness of it subjects. Trade, arts, the navy, the militia,

our colonies all open inexhaustible channels of employment and

maintenance. And yet there are who can call children, those children too

of the public, not in a ludicrous, but in the dearest tenderest sense,

since in the public they ought to find that office of a parent, of which

the guilt, the inability, the want of nature in their natural relations,

or their death may have defrauded them; there are, I say, who can call

such children a _burthen_! We complain of the defect of population, and

yet have seen interest creative of obduracy, and perpetuating ignorance

and error, manifestly thinning the species, by nipping those tender

blossoms of human kind.

HERE, if this notice of the treatment of children should even appear a

digression, I should, in favor of the intention, hope forgiveness from a

humane reader. He would scarce impute it to me as matter for criticism,

the having sacrificed propriety to the introduction of a point so

important to humanity. But the truth is, that neither as a digression,

nor as a false or over-strained argument, nor as a misapplication, can

the same well be considered, by any who will withal consider its strict

affinity in so many points to the subject of which I am treating.

IT will readily appear, that both these violences offered to Nature in

the substituting the men-midwives to the females, and dry-nurses to

wet-ones, acknowledge exactly the same common parent, interest, and have

exactly the same common effect, the destruction of infants. Is it then

possible to be too much on one’s guard against those so flagrant

impositions, which are the offspring of that proof-hardened passion? Is

any thing sacred from it, since the lives of innocents palpably have not

been so, in one branch of practice, nor very presumably are one jot more

respected in the other? It is true indeed, that the practice of

employing dry-nurses has not yet ascended much among the great and rich;

first, because fashions rarely do ascend from the lower classes of life,

and next, because there is no such temptation of actual lucre to defend

or spread it: but as to that of preferring men-midwives, nothing is so

likely as its descending, as it is so much the nature of fashion to

descend, and none are more readily adopted by the lower ranks of people

from the higher ones, than those fashions which are the most foolish and

the most pernicious. And certainly this is not the one that the least

deserves those epithets.

WAS it not for this influence of the fashion, in making the most

unreasonable as well as the most dangerous things pass into practice

from the highest down to the lowest life, many an honest man might

escape the bad consequences of his following the example of those, than

whom none are so liable to be imposed on in such matters, the great and

the opulent. These make it worth the while of interested persons to

deceive them, and thus often for being cheated, pay with their money,

their health, and even with their lives. In the mean time, many who are

seduced by the vogue in which they see the men-midwives, employ them on

a principle which cannot be enough commended, their natural affection to

their wives and children. The reasoning which occurs to a husband in

middling or low life on this occasion is probably as follows. “My wife

and child are full as dear to me as those of the greatest man in the

kingdom are to him, and shall I grudge a little more expence in the

provision for their greater _safety_?” So far he reasons right: all his

mistake lies in taking too readily for granted, that same _greater

safety_, to be on the side of the men-practitioners in preference to the

midwives, because the former are employed by the great, who, by the by,

consult Nature the least of any class of life, even in points of their

own health. And certainly in many respects to that _sine-quo-non_ of

human happiness, the great had better follow the example even of the

poor, than the poor theirs. Make the most then of your reasoning from

the prevalence of fashion, the gout and the men-midwives, well

considered, are no very enviable appendixes of high-life.

IF in some that laudable tenderness for mother and child, is the

determining consideration for employing a man-midwife by whom Nature, if

consulted, would assure all concerned, that the safety of both was more

likely to be endangered than not, there are others again, in whom

calling in the aid of a man-midwife is rather matter of luxury, of

parade or ostentation, than of opinion of superior safety. These are of

that imitative kind of beings, with whom the preference of a

man-practitioner for the conducting of his wife’s lying-in, turns upon

no other motive, than what would equally make them bestow a silk gown of

a new fashion, or a laced-head upon her; from a spirit of emulation of

some neighbour or superior.

BUT what is more surprizing yet, is that notwithstanding the kind of

loathing and repugnance with which Nature inspires the women to receive

such an office from a man, as that of delivering them, a repugnance to

which they had so much better listen, since it has all the characters of

a salutary instinct; there are women so weak, as not only not to

represent to their husbands the expedience of examining, at least, the

propriety of such a fashion, before they blindly adopt it on the faith

either of others liable to be deceived, or of those interested in the

deceiving them; but who even, in a ridiculous complaisance to that

fashion, of which themselves and children are not unlikely to be the

victims, will make a point of being attended by a man-midwife, by way of

a piece of state.

I HAVE myself known women so infected by this silly vanity, that on

receiving visits from their friends after lying-in, and being delivered

by a woman, with the utmost safety and satisfaction to them, have been

ashamed of having had the better sense and regard for themselves, to

employ a midwife in defiance of the fashion, and have told their

friends, that it is true Mrs. —— had lain them, but that there was a

Doctor at hand in the next room. This by the by was false, for such a

_Led-Doctor_ is neither needed nor employed, where a midwife that knows

her business is called. If any occasion for medical or even chirurgical

skill arises from the complication of a case, there is always time to

have the advice of a regular physician, or a regular surgeon, because

that complication can never escape timely notice. It can only then be,

for the sake of his iron and steel instruments, that a man-midwife has

so much as the pretext of being necessary, and I hope to prove, that all

the needful can be much better done without them. Yes, I repeat it,

better done without them.

FOR here and throughout the reader will please to observe, that it is on

the superiority of safety in employing midwives that I impugn the

growing fashion of a recourse to men-practitioners. It is the side of

Nature I take against a set of mean mercenaries, who commit the

cruellest outrages upon her, under the falsest of all pretences in them,

that of assisting her. I would not be so criminal as to wish the benefit

of a false argument, in a point of life and death to those mothers and

children, my tender care, even could I be silly enough to imagine, that

I could pass such an one upon my reader. I wave therefore all plea of

the novelty of this upstart profession of men-midwives. Such a plea I

readily confess is not receivable. Were It so, how many valuable

discoveries or improvements must have been stifled in their birth, if

the objection to their being novelties was a valid one? All that I would

contend for is, that an innovation should not be admitted only because

it is an innovation; and that the decision of a matter of such capital

importance, is better left to Reason, always herself submissive to

Nature, than abandoned to Fashion, which so often acknowledges no other

jurisdiction than that of whim or humor.

THERE is no prescription for error, no sanction in custom against

improvements. But certainly in such a capital point as the life of so

many human creatures, in short, in one of the most sacred objects of

government, that of population, such a novelty as that of bringing

men-midwives into general practice, requires rather a greater authority

than that of Fashion, while there is such a standard of essay as Reason.

INOCULATION was not long since a novelty in this nation. The lady who

introduced it, for any thing I know to the contrary, still lives to

enjoy the honor of having procured so great a benefit to mankind. But

then this benefit would bear the fairest of all trials, that of

calculation: for what is reason itself but another word for calculation?

The procuring then the small-pox by inoculation, in a body duly

prepared, and especially at an eligible age, affords, according to the

doctrine of chances, so much a fairer prospect of safety, than in the

case of a spontaneous or accidental infection, that nothing scarcely

could be imagined more friendly to Nature than such a rational

prevention of her danger, from a distemper too rarely escaped, for the

possibility of that escape to be employed as an argument against such a

method of prevention. Here then the seeming violence offered to Nature,

appeals for its justification to Nature, Reason and Experience.

CONSULT Nature as to this innovation in the employing men-practitioners

preferably to the midwives, who have been for ages, and so universally

considered as the properest for that function. Nature will tell you,

that it is injuring her to suspect her of being so cruel a

mother-in-law, as to deny her tenderest production the female sex

sufficient succors within herself, or leave women under a necessity of

recurring to men for aid in their greatest need of it, during those

sufferings, to which it has pleased the great master of Nature to

subject peculiarly the women. If Nature then is but another name for his

Fiat through all his works, never was his will more plainly signified

than by her voice in this point: a repugnance in both sexes to that

office being administered by a man. A repugnance which is not even one

of Nature’s least remarkable signs of abhorrence from this innovation,

and is only to be surmounted in the men by interest, and in the women by

their false fear, or what is weaker yet, by their rage in following that

bell-weather Fashion, though it should lead them like sheep to the

slaughter. The uncouthness and inaptitude of the men, so ill compensated

by their miserable inventions of iron and steel instruments, form

another loud protest of Nature against this important function being

committed to men-operators.

CONSULT reason, and reason founded upon those dictates of Nature, to

which time only gives the more strength, will tell you, in contempt of

fashion, that the men-midwives will never do any thing in a matter

rather too universal for any excellence in it to depend upon Greek,

Latin, or Arabic; that they are, in short, only hatching of wind-eggs,

in the study of an art, which no incubation on it will ever sufficiently

naturalize to them.

IF to experience you appeal, I have already furnished unrefutable

arguments of that’s being against the men-midwives. But let them

remember my confession, that the number which I have quoted of women

happily delivered is taken from the course of practice of good midwives.

I am not here an advocate for bad ones, nor would I wish to authorize

them if I could. All that I shall say, and dare aver is, that the very

worst of them, unless their hands are cut off, or at least deserve to be

cut off, can hardly be worse than the best of the men-operators.

BUT while it is to the tribunal of Nature, of Reason, and of Experience,

that I presume to wish that this same Fashion might be brought; I

readily acknowledge its force though not its justice. I feel the power

of it, with pain, for the sake of humanity[21]! My opposition then to

this fashion is rather founded in duty than in hope. The weakness of it

will probably furnish fashion only a new matter of triumph, not indeed

over me who am too low for it, but over the welfare of mankind, which it

has often, in more points than this, the pleasure to see sacrificed to

it, though in not one perhaps more palpably than in this one.

IN the mean time it might be worth the while of even those who not being

themselves men-midwives, nor having any personal interest in patronizing

them, owe their favorable notion of them to their own fair judgment; it

would, I say, even be worth their while to consider that there may

possibly be a time, when they may themselves see reason to change that

judgment of theirs. They may possibly discover the illusions of

interest, under the old stale mask of service to the public. They may

find out the folly of fashion. But will not it be too late, when that

fury of fashion shall, like a pestilence, have either swept away the

good midwives, or at least have so thinned their numbers, as not to

leave enough for the demand of the service? They must in time become, to

all intents and purposes, like an old obsolete law, as effectually

abolished by disuse, as if abrogated by a formal repeal. “The matter

would not be much if they were,” an instrumentarian will probably say,

but I doubt much, whatever he might gain by it, whether mankind or

population would profit much by that extermination, even though the

men-midwives with their tire-têtes, crotchets, and forceps, were to

succeed to their business.

AND that such an extermination is far from improbable, will appear no

strained inference to those who consider the power of Fashion, which

establishes its tyranny, much as the first Roman emperors did theirs

over that commonwealth, by leaving a semblance of liberty without the

substance; whence the baneful effects do not the less follow, or rather

the more surely follow. Thus there is indeed as yet no act of parliament

for the preference of men-practitioners or the extinction of the

midwives, but the statutes of fashion are not only more forcible than

any act of a human legislature, but, in this matter even than the laws

of Nature herself tho’ inculcating their observance, under pain of

death, or at the least of severe corporal punishment; such as being torn

with cold pinchers, or cut or punctured with instruments, or put to more

pain than necessary.

ALREADY has fashion driven numbers of women out of their livelihood to

make way for the encroachments of the men on the female provinces of

industry, though there never was a time, in which it was not a just

complaint that there were rather much too few means of employment for

women. Fashion has determined it otherwise, and many callings formerly

appropriated to females are now exercised by men.

BUT as to this profession of midwifery, even the total extinction of the

real midwives, would not be perhaps so bad as giving that name to those

poor creatures in training under the men-practitioners, who

independently of their own incapacity of practice, consequently of

forming good practitioners, have a palpable interest not to suffer their

women-pupils to gain any eminence in the profession that might give

umbrage to themselves[22]. The midwives whom these men-practitioners

would perhaps gratiously allow to subsist, might to their own

insufficiency add the dangerous circumstance of creating, or at least of

not preventing, by duly exerting themselves in the predisposing part,

the necessity of calling in their protectors, especially where

recommended by them. Not that I imagine even these mock-midwives would

wilfully be guilty of such prevarication in their duty. For them not to

deserve such a suspicion, it is enough that they are women, consequently

tender-hearted. But that does not exclude the idea of weakness. But

where so fair a virtue as gratitude may disguise even from themselves

the fouler motive of interest lurking at bottom, if that tenderness is

not even destroyed, it may not impossibly be made a tool of, and join in

persuading them, that things had really better be left to the

men-practitioners, whose creatures and devotees they are. Thence a

negligence superadded to their defect of skill. Such subalterns then

would, at least, not be dis-inclined to the “FINDING” _themselves_ “AT A

LOSS”, or yet worse for the patient, have by their omissions, if not

commissions, bred the occasion of “_finding_” themselves “_at that

loss_”, even mechanically, and without the direct design of paying their

court to their recommending “_accoucheur_, _their man of honor_ and

_real friend_,” in a _candid_ recourse to him. Pity it were indeed that

so charming a harmony should not subsist between _the accoucheurs_ and

such _midwives_, for the “MUTUAL ADVANTAGE” of both! A harmony, which

however could hardly be established but at the expence of the sacrificed

patients.

AND here I appeal to the reader’s own fair judgment, whether I

over-strain the consequence against such wretched creatures as they

cannot but be who must, for bread, be so subservient to the

men-midwives, and be what the French call, their _âmes damnées_ (souls

sold). Can any thing be more probable than that these _good women_

dignified by the men-practitioners, out of their special grace and favor

with the title of midwives, will on all occasion consult the

“_advantage_” of their kind _patrons_ and “_real friends_”. And how can

that advantage be better consulted than by bungling their work so as to

make it _appear_ necessary to have a _candid recourse_ to the good

Doctor, who recommended and warranted them? can it, in short, be

imagined, that they will be less mere machines than Dr. Smellie’s Dolls,

or indeed furnish less occasion, than the education under those Dolls,

for the _iron_ and _steel instruments_, which are the most part

understood to be indispensably necessary where the midwife shall have

failed. And as to such midwives as have been formed or recommended by

the men-practitioners, their _not_ failing would indeed be the wonder!

THUS the name of a midwife may subsist after the reality shall have

perished, and the world so often deceived by mere names, may not

perhaps discover this annihilation till long after it is effectuated,

or till it is too late to repair the damages, which will hardly fail

of discovering it to them. Of good midwives there never were too many;

but they are now much too few; though still not more rare in

proportion than those of the men-midwives, who may be called good,

comparatively to so many of them as are dangerously superficial.

Discouragement has already greatly hindered the places of the good

female-practitioners who are gone off the stage, from being duly

supplied. Proper subjects decline taking up a profession, in which

they must have to dread the prevalence of so false a prejudice against

them, as that which determines the preference of the male-operators.

It is easier to destroy, than to create a-new; and perhaps when the

need of good midwives shall be at the greatest, the difficulty of

finding such, will make the employing of men-practitioners, with all

the so just objections to them, even a necessity. Things are not at

present perhaps far from that point, and an alarming consideration

that would be to all women, if they were but to reflect on the

increase of pain and danger to themselves in the hours already too big

with both, of their increase, I say, by the most aukward and violent

aid of the men, compared to the so much more effectual and gentle

methods so natural to the women-assistents.

IF the parties then principally concerned in the decision of this

question, and especially the women who are the patients, and their

tender relations of husband, father, or brother, &c. were but to consult

their own feelings, their reason, and even that instinct which, in this

point, is itself so strong a reason from its being the voice of Nature

never unhearkened to with impunity, they would soon, to your objection

drawn from a fashion scarce less ridiculous than pernicious, allow no

more weight than, in fact, it deserves.

OBJECTION the Fourteenth.

YOU must allow, however, that it must be a false modesty that, in the

women, which can oppose the preference of the men-practitioners to the

female ones.