I KNOW indeed that Dr. Smellie (page 2. of his introduction) attributes
the opposition made by the Athenian women[23] to the prohibition of
midwives, and to the acceptance of men-practitioners in their room to
“_mistaken modesty_.” It may however with more reason and truth be
averred, that the admittence of men to that function by women, would be
in the women a most egregiously MISTAKEN IMMODESTY. Since, surely the
virtue or grace of female modesty is not an object to be held so cheap,
as to be sacrificed for worse than nothing, for nothing better, in
short, than the purchase with it of danger or perdition to both the
mother and child. After so valuable a sacrifice as that of modesty
itself, it may perhaps sound mean to add any thing comparatively, so
trifling as that of the hire not given to the person who prostitutes
herself in some sort on a so much mistaken hope, but to the very person
to whom she is prostituted in that hope of superior safety.
I AM not then here to assume a character, that would become me so ill,
of a Casuist or Divine, by pretending to fix the degree of moral
turpitude in the submission of modest women to a practice, which, I will
even allow might be justified by the superior consideration of safety to
two lives, if that consideration was not a question most impudently
begged, with so little foundation, that the very contrary thereof is the
truth.
NEITHER would I here incur the just charge of impertinence, in giving my
private and insignificant opinion on an undecency so unwarranted by any
necessity. That would look too like dictating to others, what they are
to think of a practice, of which every one will doubtless judge for
himself. The boundaries of female modesty are so well known, and so
ascertained by common consent, that surely it little belongs to me to
offer new lights upon that subject.
WHAT I have then to say, on this head, is purely in justification of
that modesty, which the men-midwives are for obvious reasons pleased to
call a false one, though so far as it pleads for excluding them, it is
an ingratitude to that Nature, of which it is the peculiar gift to the
female sex, not to term it even a wise virtue.
SOCIETY especially stands indebted to Nature for her suggestion of
modesty in this point. If in all ages, in all civilized countries, the
wife is considered as the peculiar property of a husband, insomuch, that
all laws human and divine consecrate, if I may use the expression, to
him alone, exclusive of all other men, the access to the reserved parts
of the wife’s body, certainly such a privilege can hardly be thought
lightly communicable. And what can be more so than suffering a man,
mercenarily or wantonly, or perhaps both, to invade that so sacred
property, under the mask of a service, for which he is by Nature so
evidently disqualified? While Nature too has made so ample a provision
for this very service, in fitting the women for it, with so much more
propriety and safety, both to the concern of the public in the welfare
of population, as well as to the domestic honor of families, which is
not without some danger, at least, from the practice of midwifery being
in the hands of men.
AS to this last averment of mine, the truth of it is so glaring, that it
does not even need Dr. Smellie’s own implicit confession of it, in his
instructions to the men-practitioners in general, or, if you please, to
his more than nine hundred pupils.
“_He_ (_the_ ACCOUCHEUR) _ought to_ ACT _and_ SPEAK _with the utmost_
DELICACY _of_ DECORUM, _and_ NEVER VIOLATE _the_ TRUST _reposed in him,
so as to harbour the least_ IMMORAL _or_ INDECENT _design; but demean
himself in all respects suitable to the_ DIGNITY _of his_ PROFESSION,”
p. 447.
HERE I confess myself so smitten with the propriety and sanctity of the
precept of the good Doctor’s, and particularly with the needfulness of
it, that I would advise every man-practitioner of midwifery, of a
certain age that might require it, to have the said commandment wrote
out in _gold letters_, and wear it about his arm, especially on his
proceeding to _officiate_, by way of amulet, phylactery or preservative
against any incident temptation to _violate_ his _trust_, or to fall off
from the high _dignity_ of his profession. All that I fear is, that its
virtue may not always be to be depended upon, against the energy planted
by nature in the difference of the sexes. No one would be farther than I
from the cruel injustice of drawing consequences unfavorable to any set
of men, from the misconduct of any particular individual in
it.[24]Errors are purely personal. If I then so much as mention the case
of a man-midwife convicted of having debauched a gentleman’s wife, in
consequence of his admission to the practice of his profession of
midwifery upon her, it is by no means neither with a design to insult
the unhappy criminals, nor to draw from thence an inference to the
disfavor of the men-practitioners in this point, beyond what I am
authorized by the constancy of the temptation from Nature, to all, yes,
to all, who, by their age, in one sex, are not past it: I say in one
sex, because in the other, the female, the very circumstances of a
woman’s needing a midwife, shews that she is not past the age of, at
least, causing a temptation. Further, it would even be a matter of
argument on the side of the men-midwives, that so _few_ instances come
to the knowledge of the public, of the ill-consequence of a practice
which breaks down the capital barriers of modesty; if those
ill-consequences were not, in the nature of them, not only a secret, but
easy to be kept secret. Who would complain but the husband or relations
of transactions between a man-midwife and his patient? But then how
seldom need a third to be let into such a secret?
I WOULD not then have the men-midwives to be too forward to treat the
modesty of the women on this head as a false one, or their scruples as a
weakness. Modesty in this case is not only the safeguard of the lives of
themselves and children, but of their own honor, which if it does not
receive an actual fall in such a subjection to a man-midwife, had
perhaps better not be so unnecessarily risked so near the brink of the
precipice.
I AM not writing here for Italians or Spaniards, or any of the
inhabitants of those countries who are so prone to jealousy, perhaps
because they know their women. I am now addressing myself to Englishmen,
not jealous, because, if they know theirs, they must know that, in
proportion to the number, no women on the earth have more of the reality
of virtue and modesty. I will not suppose then any thing so offensive,
as that the chastity of the generality of them is not infinitely
superior to the advantages or overtures for design afforded the men
admitted to such a privacy, as that of attending them in their lying-in
and delivering them. But would the honestest woman, or one however sure
of herself or of her virtue, think it eligible, without a full
satisfactory proof of that superior safety, which is her object in
preferring men-midwives, to be herself the occasion of temptation to
those people? How can she answer that she will not be it? In that so
formidable army of mercenaries, actually continuing to form itself under
the banners of Fashion, and headed by Interest, can she answer that the
insensible stoics of it, will fall to her share? Would a woman, I will
not say, of strict principles of honor, but barely of not the most
abandoned ones, submit herself in the manner she must to a man-midwife,
on her employing him, if she would but satisfy herself, as she easily
may, that his aid cannot be more effectual than that of a woman? But
what! if it is most undoubtedly a less safe one?
BUT this is far from all to be objected on the head of modesty to this
practice. The opportunities, if not of temptation, if not of seduction
by it, at least of offensiveness to female reserve are such, as would
make even a husband, the least susceptible of jealousy, so uneasy for
the outrages to which the employing of a man-midwife in the course of
his wife’s pregnancy and delivery might expose her, as would make him
think it no indifferent point for his judgment to settle whether such
outrages might not better be spared her. It will not I presume be
denied, that all female modesty is a flower, the delicacy of which
cannot be too much guarded against any tendency to blast it, and that
nothing can threaten more that effect, than such infringements of the
unity of a husband’s privilege in the sole incommunicable possession of
his wife’s body, as are implied in the course of a man-midwife’s
attendance. An unity of privilege, which, when broke in one point, does
not always stop at that, but may proceed to farther breach, where there
is art on one side, and weakness on the other. Many women are doubtless
proof against the slipperiness of such an overture: but all have not
alike strength of mind.
BUT lest I should be here taxed with forging of phantoms merely for the
honor of combating them, I shall only entreat all parties concerned to
consider the following so probable circumstance, and then let them
decide as their own judgment will direct them: a circumstance taken (can
any thing be fairer?) even from a man-midwife’s own stating, as well as
from the nature of things, of which none need be ignorant that will
think at all about them.
IT is then to be observed, that during a woman’s pregnancy, and before
the labor-pains come on, one of the principal points of midwifery is,
what is called the art of _Touching_. Thence are derived the surest
prognostics for preparation, and especially from the signs it affords of
rectitude or obliquity of the Uterus. I have already offered reasons
needless to repeat, why the men can never arrive at the excellence of
skill in the women in this particular. But as to the importance of this
faculty of _Touching_, hear what Dr. Smellie himself says.
P. 180. “The design of _touching_ is to be informed, whether the woman
is or is not with child; to know how far she is advanced in her
pregnancy; if she is in danger of a miscarriage; if the _os uteri_ be
dilated; and in time of labor to form a right judgment of the case, from
the opening of the _os internum_, and the pressing down of the membranes
with their waters, and lastly, to distinguish what part of the child is
presented.”
Again, P. 448. speaking of a _midwife_, he says, “she ought to be well
skilled in the art of _touching_ pregnant women, and know in what manner
the womb stretches, together with the situation of all the abdominal
VISCERA: she ought to be perfectly mistress of the ART of EXAMINATION in
the time of labour”.
HERE you have from an unsuspected authority a certainly not over-rated
importance of the expedience of preliminary TOUCHING. Now granting, only
for argument’s sake, what is assuredly false, that a man-practitioner
can be equal (superior he would not in this point, at least, have the
impudence to pretend himself) to a midwife; let a husband, let a wife,
but reflect on the difference, every thing else being equal, there must
be as to _modesty_, between the function of _touching_ being performed
by a man or by a woman. Let a husband, I say, for an instant figure to
himself what a figure he must make, what a figure his wife must make,
under such a ceremony performed by a lusty HE-MIDWIFE, exploring those
arcana of the female fabric, and especially to so little purpose, with
his natural disqualifications for so much as knowing what he is about.
Will the husband be present? What must be the wife’s confusion during so
nauseous and so gross a scene? Will he _modestly_ withdraw while his
wife is so _served_? What must be his wife’s danger from one of those
rummagers, if she should be handsome enough to deserve his attention, or
a compliment from him on such a visitation of her secret charms, the
more flattering from _him_, not only as he must be supposed so good a
judge from the frequency of his occasions of comparison, but as it must
imply a superior corporal merit in the woman so visited, as could
overcome that satiety which a fastidious plenty of patients might so
naturally be imagined to create in a man-midwife? Will any one say, that
these suppositions are over-strained, or out of Nature? I fancy, that if
the secret histories of many families were ransacked, of the practice on
which the men-midwives were in possession, it would not be always found,
that those preliminary visitations were not turned to some account of
interest or seduction. And yet an omission of that _touching_ might be
dangerous. How kind is it then in Nature, to have of herself so far
consulted the good and tranquility of society, in palpably bestowing
upon women a faculty, which she has as palpably refused to the men, in
whom the exercise of it would for obvious reasons be big with so many
inconveniences? Is there any breach of charity in the taking for granted
the existence of such inconveniences, unless indeed, all of a sudden, in
favor of this lucre-begotten sect, the men were ceased to be men, and
the women women?
BUT allowing that nothing was to pass between a man-midwife and his
patient, in this _act_ of _touching_, beyond the necessity of the
practice, or in a merely technical sense, that in short no such
libertine impression should make itself be felt in the course of such
_touches_, as should discompose the good _Doctor_’s DIGNITY, and
endanger the patient’s honor, by present or future attempts derived from
such a strange privity; is it not to be feared, that a designing or
interested person may take other advantages besides that of gratifying
sensuality? May not a woman, the more attached she is to her modesty,
the greater sacrifice she has made of it, in her innocence of intention,
only imagine herself but the more subjected to a man, to whom she has
submitted in the manner she must do to a man-midwife, and let him take
an ascendant over her and her family, of which a midwife would not so
much as dream, from her office being so much in course, and too little
extraordinary for her to have any extraordinary pretentions or designs?
On the contrary, a man-midwife need scarce set any bounds to his. In any
differences in a family, especially between man and wife, must not a
man-practitioner, from such a familiarity with the wife’s person, have
such a footing in the confidence of the wife, as may enable him to
dispose of her will almost in any thing? He may be her apothecary,
physician, surgeon, privy-councellor, what not? What can a woman refuse
a man, to whom she is so deluded as to think she owes her own life, or
that of a darling child, all his merit, in which I have before
explained? What can a woman in short refuse a man, to whom nothing of
that has been refused, in which consist all the preliminaries of
granting every thing? She may indeed refuse him the sacrifice of her
virtue, if he should think it worth designing upon, but how few things
else could she refuse him? Once more the greater value she put on the
sacrifice of so much of her modesty, the less would she be able to deny
him any thing else, as any thing else must comparatively appear so
inconsiderable.
BUT hitherto I have spoke only of those outrages and dangers to modesty
from the preparatory attendance of the man-midwife as occasion may
require, during the pregnancy. But as to his officiating in the crisis
of the labor-pains and delivery, there are two very essential points of
consideration.
THE FIRST. The modesty of the women, unaccustomed to the approaches of
other men than a husband, must be in great sufferance in the moments of
their labor-pains. All Nature agonizes in them. They are at once
weakened in the flesh and in the spirit. The bare presence of a man to
officiate at such a time, may excite in them a revolution capable of
stopping the labor-pains caused by the expulsive efforts of delivery,
which thus becomes dangerously retarded, and may so overpower them, as
to put them in the greatest peril of their lives. This is what has often
happened. You may see frequent examples of this revolt of Nature against
the ministry of men-midwives in Dr. La Motte himself, a man-midwife. If
Nature then suffers so much in women at that juncture, when a person,
nay even of the same sex, offers her aid, in certain indispensable
occasions, to which humanity is subjected; how greatly must the presence
of a man increase their constraint and embarrassment, and rob them still
more of that so necessary freedom in the animal functions! But how
greatly ought the women to thank that their instinctive repugnance of
Nature to such a prostitution of their persons, if they consider those
tortures, which, by the listening to that same repugnance, may at once
be saved to their modesty, and to their personal feeling. Let them paint
themselves the following posture prescribed by a man-midwife. “_The
patient must be commodiously placed, that is to say, on the bed-side,
her thighs raised and expanded, her feet drawn up to her posteriors, and
kept steady in that posture by some trusty helpers._”[25] Levret, p.
161. _On the use of the new crooked forceps._ Here it may be said; “why
there is nothing in this attitude, however shockingly indecent, but what
may be sanctified by the extremities of necessity”. Very well. But what
must a husband, what must a wife think at her being _spread out_ in this
manner, under the hands and eyes of a man-practitioner, with his
helpers, perhaps his trusty apprentices, only for the experiment of a
_forceps_ of a new invention, the merit of which too is a so contested
an one, that Levret himself is forced to own that, “that same FORCEPS
_would be[26] an instrument of pure_ SPECULATION, _and not of_ PRACTICE,
IF (N. B. that IF) _a certain general precept should be true_,” which,
by the by, is most certainly so! So that, in this case, for example, you
see how a woman may be treated, only to ascertain the merit of some
new-fangled gimcrack of an instrument. But to how many occasions of as
little, or even less necessity than this, for putting a woman into
postures of this sort, might not wantonness, interest, or other motives
give birth? Or can pretexts for such insults to modesty be wanting to
designingness?
THE SECOND consideration is this. Those moments of weakness of spirit,
and infirmity to which the labor-pains subject the women may, in some of
naturally the weakest of them be, liable to leave impressions in favor
of a man-midwife, the less suspected of harm, and consequently the more
dangerous for their being suggested by that gratitude for his
imaginary[27] contribution to their deliverance, which is itself a
virtue, though the object of it is so miserably mistaken by them. Let
any one image to himself what must often happen in Nature, a woman
sinking under her pains, her mind all softened and overpowered with her
present feelings, and looking up for _relief_ to the _man_, employed, as
she imagines, to procure it her, though the real fact oftenest is, that
he will not have enough prevented her pain, or perhaps greatly
occasioned its increase. Of this however she knowing nothing, sees him
in the amiable light of her deliverer from her actual and intolerable
state of pain. In the mean time, those aukward uncouth endeavours of his
to relieve and deliver her, even though they should aggravate her
torture, pass upon her for master-pieces of art or skill. “Who would be
without a man-midwife?” At length, Nature sometimes, even in spite of
all his omissions, or bungled operation, proceeds in her favorite task
of delivery, that is to say, if he has not hurried or made tragic work
of it, with his mispractice or his instruments. The patient then is rid
of her burthen, and what are then her feelings? Those of exquisite
delight, from the comparison with what she was induring but the instant
before. It is a transport of joy, not unmingled with gratitude, to the
person to whom she fancies herself in any measure obliged for it. The
ugliest wretch on earth, so he could but be imagined the cause of such a
delivery, would, in those instants, assume in her eyes the form of
Loveliness itself. Even with the greatest innocence of heart she could
hug, she could kiss him in the ebullitions of her joy and gratitude. Let
no one imagine these expressions are over-strained. Such a rapture of
felicity, in the sudden case of being taken as it were down from a rack,
is not of a Nature to know any bounds of moderation, nor can be
conceived but by those who have felt it. Her gratitude would even extend
to inanimate things, much more to the dear Doctor, to whom she conceives
she owes so much. She eyes him with all the intense eagerness of a
gratitude so fond, that its transiency into a passion of another nature
would not appear such a prodigy, to those who consider how apt passions
of tenderness are to confound motives and run into one another. The
melting-softness of those moments of infirmity and weakness of spirit,
affords a susceptibility of impressions, which may not afterwards be so
soon worn out, and of which the usual affection from the difference of
sexes, in the parties, may sooner or later come in for its share. Dr.
Smellie has, as I have before observed, implicitly allowed the
possibility of a temptation to men, and shall I not follow his laudable
example of candor, and confess that there may also be weak women?
IT is indeed true that in cases of extremities, such as most certainly
are not the frequentest ones, any thought of immodesty may be intirely
out of the question. The sad and suffering state of a woman agonizing
with pain, at the gates one may say of death, leaves little room for
licentious temptations. But, once more, those cases are much the rarest:
and even in those, the greater the danger will have been, the greater
must the gratitude afterwards be for the imaginary service, that will be
supposed to have accomplished the deliverance. Let a midwife have really
rendered that service, the gratitude will scarce be so quick, so lively
or so lasting, only because she is not a man.
IF it shall be here objected, that the men-midwives ought to be above
all suspicion or scandal of this sort; I shall only say, that at least
it is their interest to appear so. But they themselves will not pretend
to an exemption from temptation, nor can answer for themselves that such
a temptation may not come into existence, as that all their virtue,
fortified by the divine precept before quoted from Dr. Smellie, may not
defend them from yielding to it. They are not, or at least ought not to
be men in years for obvious reasons as to that manual practice of theirs
which at the best is so indifferent. Let any one then consider the
consequence of this worse than unnecessarily putting young women, in
such manner, into the hands of men in the vigor of their age. Let any
impartial person but reflect what barriers are thrown down, what a door
is opened to licentiousness, by the admission of this so perfectly
needless innovation. Think of an army, if but of barely Dr. Smellie’s
nine-hundred pupils, constantly recruiting with the pupils of those
pupils, let loose against the female sex, and of what an havock they may
make of both its safety and modesty, to say nothing of the detriment to
population, in the destruction of infants, and I presume, it will not
appear intirely in me a suggestion of private interest to wish things,
in this point, restored to the old course of practice of this art of
midwifery by women. A course which Nature has so self-evidently
established, in her tender regard to the female sex, and to its darling
offspring, and in which she has not less consulted one of her primary
ends, the Good of Society, in the greater security of the conjugal union
and property, which ought to be so sacred, and especially so, for the
honor of the human understanding, from the invasion of an upstart
profession, sordidly mean in its motives, infamously false in its
pretences, shamefully ridiculous in its practice, and yet dreadfully
serious in all its consequences.
CONCLUSION of the FIRST PART.
In the foregoing part of this work I have contented myself with
asserting, in general, the perfect inutility of those instruments, of
which the male-practitioners themselves confess the danger, and use them
not a bit the less for that confession. It is then for the following and
second part, that I have reserved the entering into a more particular
discussion of them. Therein will appear, upon how false and slender a
foundation the gentlemen-midwives have insinuated themselves into a
business so little made for them. The truth is, that the pernicious
quackery of those same instruments has been artfully made the pretext,
and become the sanction of an innovation set on foot by Interest,
adopted by Credulity, and at length fostered by Fashion. The employing
of midwives was undoubtedly not long since, in this country, the General
Rule. The calling in of men-practitioners, upon very extraordinary
occasions, was an Exception, and a very rare one, to that General Rule.
But by a fatal inversion of the natural order of things, the Exception
is recently crept into the place of the General Rule. The point is to
consider, whether this palpable violence to Nature is of that benefit to
society which it is pretended to be.
I HAVE already examined some of the arguments in favor of the
men-practitioners. But the principal one, deduced from the incapacity,
or rather aversion of the midwives, upon just grounds, from using
instruments, merits an ampler scrutiny. In proof of my candor in it, I
shall take most of my remarks on those instruments from what the
men-practitioners themselves say, and confess of them. This, I presume,
cannot be deemed unfair.
UPON the whole, those parties whom the decision may concern, will please
to decide on which side the force of Reason and Truth shall appear the
greatest; and so deciding, it is, in fact, in their own favor, and in
one of their most capital concerns, that they will decide.
THEY will decide, in short, whether, upon the whole, the plea of the
men-practitioners, founded upon the ignorance of a few midwives which,
bad as it is, is more than balanced by their incompetency in the manual
function, and to which a remedy might easily be found, is a valid one
for driving out of the practice of midwifery a sex, to which the faculty
of it is self-evidently the genuine gift of Nature herself, only to make
way for a set of interested male-practitioners, whose so boasted art is
oftenest signalized by the most barbarous and horrid outrages upon
Nature, with this aggravation, that they are needlessly committed under
the specious and plausible pretext of flying to her assistence.
The End of the FIRST PART.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
A
TREATISE
OF
MIDWIFERY.
PART the SECOND.
Containing various observations on the labor and delivery of lying-in
women, including a discussion of the pretended necessity for the
employing instruments.