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HINTS TO HUSBANDS:
A Revelation of
THE MAN-MIDWIFE'S MYSTERIES.
BY GEORGE MORANT,
LATE GRENADIER GUARDS.
"Sit you down,
And let me wring your heart, for so I shall,
If it be made of penetrable stuff;
If damned custom have not brazed it so,
That it be proof and bulwark against sense."
Third Edition,
REVISED AND ENLARGED.
LONDON:
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO.,
4, STATIONERS' HALL COURT.
1857.
TO THE
HUSBANDS & FATHERS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM,
AND TO THOSE HONOURABLE MEN OF THE
MEDICAL PROFESSION,
WHO REPROBATE AND CONDEMN
THE UNNATURAL CUSTOM OF MAN-MIDWIFERY,
AS AN OUTRAGE ON THE MODESTY OF WOMEN,
AND DEROGATORY TO THEIR OWN VOCATION;
AND TO ALL WHO HAVE
HEARTS TO FEEL AND COURAGE TO COPE WITH
THIS ENORMOUS WRONG,
THESE PAGES ARE INSCRIBED BY
THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
The two-fold object which we desire to attain in the following pages, and
to which we earnestly entreat the attention of our readers, is the
exposure and amendment of a vast social evil, which we have reason to
believe has, to most reflecting men, become well nigh intolerable. It will
be obvious that to bring this evil, with effect, to the bar of public
opinion, we must probe it to the very core, and fearlessly unveil and drag
into the light its indecent mysteries. In so doing we shall doubtless
incur the censures of those easy-going people who agree with the poet
that--
"Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise;"
who, like the bird of the desert, by hiding their heads deem their bodies
out of danger; who, dead to all the generous sympathies which elevate man
above the brute, would reduce the minds of others to their own dull and
dreary level of stolid inanity; of those prudent persons who, closing
their eyes to the lightning flash and their ears to the vollied thunder,
sneak through the world by any side-path sooner than encounter a
difficulty foot to foot and hand to hand; and, without pretending to any
extraordinary knowledge of the human heart, we fear, of the majority of
those women who have already sacrificed their modesty at the altar of
custom; and, above all, of that class whose presumptuous charlatanism we
desire to lay bare. But for all this we care not one jot, provided the
mists of imposture be dispelled, and our countrywomen rescued from the
disgrace and degradation of an odious system, which, originating in a
dissolute age, has since been promoted and encouraged by self-interested
empirics, and sanctioned by indifference, credulity, and error.
HINTS TO HUSBANDS, &c. &c.
CHAPTER I.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
The practice of _man_-midwifery is one among the noxious weeds which the
rank luxuriance of civilization has produced, and since its introduction
it has thriven with unrestrained vitality and ever-increasing strength,
until at length it spreads its Upas shadow far and wide over our land, and
treacherously, mysteriously, and silently distils the poison of its
presence deep into the sanctuaries of domestic life. Reader, we will make
plain to you the nature and polluting influence of this redundant growth
of luxury and vice; and then, with God's help, may you, and tens of
thousands of your fellow-men, swear by all things holy, just, and good,
that the hallowed purity of home shall never more be blighted by its
deadly shade.
We are accustomed to speak of ourselves as of a highly moral people; and
of our manners, habits, and customs as superior to those of other
nations; and of our capital as the most civilized city in the world;
"But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of mind,
When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman's ware or his word?
When the poor are hovell'd and hustled together, each sex like swine,
When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie;
When chalk, and alum, and plaster are sold to the poor for bread,
And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life.
And sleep must lie down armed, for the villanous centre-bits
Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights.
While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps as he sits,
To pestle a poison'd poison behind his crimsoned lights."
Oh, but, say you, these are not flaws in the crystal, but mere specks upon
the mirror, which a little careful polishing may remove with ease. See the
propriety, order, and decency of our households; our noble sense of
justice, right, and honour; our strict observance of religious duties; the
chaste and modest demeanour of our women; and beholding these things, who
shall say that we are not a moral people?
To the unreflecting and casual observer, mere outward semblance would
appear to justify and confirm this character of our society. Nevertheless
there is, beneath the surface of this seeming health, a loathsome canker,
eating into the very vitals of home life![1] and we ourselves are sapping
the very foundations of morality, and insulting and outraging the most
precious feelings of those whom we should love best and cherish most upon
earth, by subjecting them to a usage which first robs them of their
birthright, modesty, and then deadens, and finally destroys, all
perception of their loss; while "moral England," under the delusion of a
falsely termed necessity, endures, and even fosters a pollution, which
France, to her honour, now repudiates and abhors!
Believing it to be a fact that ninety-nine men in every hundred are
ignorant of the extent of the outrages to which their wives submit, when
"attended" by a _man_-midwife in their "confinements," we shall, in this
essay, endeavour to clear up the mystery which envelopes the proceedings
of this class of practitioners, showing by extracts from their own
treatises what their "process" is; and having afterwards placed before our
readers the opinions and arguments of able and scientific men against such
an utter subversion of propriety, we shall, with confidence in the
result, leave the question to be decided by the strong voice of public
opinion whether this pernicious custom, indecent and degrading as all will
admit it to be, shall longer disgrace our country.
The spirit of evil, though not, as in Eden,
"Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve,
Assaying by his devilish art to reach
The organs of her fancy,"
yet, under another shape, was still at his old work at the time when,[2]
instead of the ordinary midwife, whose presence would have given rise to
scandal, a surgeon[3] was summoned to attend the delivery of Mademoiselle
de la Valiere, mistress of Louis XIV., for so powerful was the effect of
fashion in these dissolute times, that, soon after the first examples had
been given by persons whose rank and condition enabled them to brave
public opinion, the Parisian ladies of fashion, throwing aside the veil of
modesty, which had from the earliest ages, and in all countries, enjoined
female attendance, followed the precedent of this abandoned woman, and the
practice of _man_-midwifery soon became general in the French capital.
The historian well and truly describes the state of society in those evil
days, and how the manners of the age became, year by year, more lost to
virtue, dignity, and honour, until at length all the better feelings of
human nature, even religion itself, became a by-word and a mockery amidst
the chaos of the Revolution. "The ante-chambers of Versailles were daily
besieged by crowds of titled, yet needy supplicants, who eagerly sought
employment, favour, or distinction from the king's ministers or his
mistresses, and mandates issued from them were obeyed without a murmur
from Calais to the Pyrenees. What, then, was it which, in a country so
profusely endowed with the riches of nature, and inhabited by a race of
men so brave, so active, and so enterprising, has led to a convulsion
attended with the unspeakable horrors of the French Revolution? The answer
is to be found in the previous state of the country, and the general
perversion of the national mind; in the oppressions to which the people
were subjected, the vices by which the nobles alienated them; the
corruptions by which morals were contaminated; the errors with which
religion was disfigured; the extent to which infidelity had spread."[4]
"Corruption, in its worst form, had long tainted the manners of the court
as well as the nobility, and poisoned the sources of influence. The favour
of royal mistresses, or the intrigues of the court, openly disposed of the
highest appointments, both in the army, the church, and the civil service.
Since the reign of the Roman emperors, profligacy had never been conducted
in so open and undisguised a manner as under Louis XV. and the Regent
Orleans. From the secret memoirs of the period, which have now been
published, it is manifest that the licentious novels, which at that time
disgraced French literature, conveyed a faithful picture of the manners of
the age."[5]
"It is difficult to treat of this subject (times of Louis XV.) without
disclosing particulars at which purity may blush, or on which
licentiousness may gloat; but general observations make little impression
on the mind even of the most reflecting reader, if not attended with a
detail of facts which proves that it is well founded; and one authentic
example of the manner of the court and aristocratic circles in Paris,
anterior to the Revolution, will produce a stronger conviction than whole
chapters of assertion. All that we read in ancient historians, veiled in
the decent obscurity of a learned language, of the orgies of the ancient
Babylon, was equalled, if not exceeded, by the nocturnal revels of the
Regent Orleans, the Cardinal Dubois, and his other licentious
associates."[6] Such is a faithful picture of the manners and vices of the
age and country in which the custom of man-midwifery took its rise. Here
and there a bright star shone out, the brighter for the blackness of that
hideous night: men of the highest order of mind did all that great
eloquence and vigorous thought could do to stay the strong and turbid
current of pollution which threatened to overwhelm the human race, and
amongst these great spirits of the past, the physician Roussel, in a work
remarkable for the delicacy of its sentiments, the force of its satire,
and the strength and power of its language, endeavoured to turn the
attention of his countrymen to the indecency of the practice which was
first adopted in the harlot De la Valiere's chamber.[7] In some measure he
succeeded; but who can wonder if, in that vicious age, his eloquence had
passed unheeded, and the delicacy of his sentiments had been scoffed at
and derided by the charlatans of the day, in a city where adultery was the
fashion, and marriage but a cloak for vice. The causes which then
prevented the writings and counsels of these eminent men from taking full
effect upon the public mind, no longer exist; and, accordingly, in that
very Paris, where, in former times, amidst such scenes of vice and
profligacy as the historian describes, the immodest practice originated,
has since sprung up an agitation against it, which is increasing day by
day. Colleges, both metropolitan and provincial, have long been
established for the instruction of _females_ in the obstetric "art," and
many of those women, who have been educated in them, possessed such
talents and intelligence that the treatises written by them have become
the acknowledged text books of the French medical world.
Madame Boivin[8] in the dedication of her "Memorial de l'Art des
Accouchements," 4me ed., says:--"Moved and affected by the painful cries
which mothers, victims of barbarity and ignorance, caused to be heard from
far, the Government hastened to reply to them by establishing a practical
School of Midwifery within the Lying-in Hospital: from all parts were
summoned, _not men but women_, to come and assist at the lectures of the
most eminent professors of surgery and medicine.... Already a great
number have, from this fertile source of instruction, derived the
knowledge and the qualities necessary for the exercise of an art so
important in its results to the population of the kingdom and the
happiness of families." In the preface to the above treatise, 4me ed., p.
10, we read the following allusion to the practice on this side the
channel; "Thus you will find in this edition some novel remarks ... on
certain cases of difficult labour, and on the operative process practised
in these cases, so brutally treated by practitioners beyond sea, and in a
manner so simple and so happily different by us, especially at the School
of Midwifery in Paris."
And what are we about in "moral England," all this time? Where are our
colleges of instruction, to which we have summoned "_not men but
women_"--our _Hospices de la Maternite_,[9] wherein and whereby we may
preserve the modesty of our women? Where is the voice to cry shame upon
the custom which introduces men into the sacred precincts of the marriage
chamber to perform offices which are, by nature, the duty of women
alone?[10] Shall it be said that two thousand years ago the Romans
possessed a higher sense of moral feeling than we do now? Roussel says,
"The principal reason which, among the ancients, forbade the belief that
the duty of aiding delivery could be proper to any but women--excepting
in cases of very rare occurrence, where every consideration might
necessarily yield to a pressing danger--was the grand interest of manners.
This was an object to which ancient Governments had always special regard.
They knew morality to be the foundation of all legislation, and that good
laws would be made in vain unless good morals insured their execution. The
cruelty of Archagathus' surgical operations drove the doctors from Rome.
She banished also from her bosom the Greek philosophers and orators who
were accused of having introduced and cultivated the taste for the arts
and vices of Greece. She would surely not have permitted, for any length
of time, the existence of an art, which, practised by men, would, under
the specious pretence of utility, threaten the sanctuary of marriage, and
which, striking a blow at the chief safeguard of families, would next
attack the mainsprings of the state; an art which, with power to alarm the
modesty of women, would soon leave them without a blush,[11] and cause
them to lose even the recollection of that severe virtue which had
merited the respect and veneration of the Romans, and which of old had
been the principle of the grandest revolutions. Cato, always careful to
protect the hearts of the citizens from corruption, would never have
permitted their wives, when presenting children to the republic, to
tarnish the boon by a forgetfulness of the first of all decencies."[12]
"The Greeks," says Dr. Stevens, "invariably employed women; Phanarete, the
mother of that distinguished man, Socrates, was a midwife. Hippocrates
makes mention of them; and Plato speaks somewhat extensively of midwives,
and explains their duties." "We have reason to believe," says Dr. Denman,
"that the obstetric art was altogether in the hands of women, _the natural
delicacy of females having reluctant recourse to the professional aid of
the other sex_."
Hecquet says, "The Greeks, moreover, had their female physicians, as we
perceive by the words [Greek: akestrides] and [Greek: eatrinai], which
have been preserved to us."
"Such was the chasteness of the times, that lithotomy on the female
subject was practised by one of their own sex. At Athens the positive
enactments of the land were inefficient to overcome their scrupulous
modesty. It is said the Athenian doctors procured a legal enactment
transferring the practice of midwifery to themselves; but at the very
attempt the women rose _en masse_, and declared _they would die rather
than submit to such an outrage_ upon common decency.... The Romans[13]
also employed women only. Pliny, in his _Natural History_, speaks of
midwives,[14] explains their duties, and mentions some of great
reputation. According to Roman law, midwives were recognized as a distinct
class in society, and enjoyed certain rights and immunities in common with
the medical profession."[15]
We have shown, on the testimony of medical writers, that the practice of
_man_-midwifery was introduced in France, or rather in Paris, for it was
never generally adopted in the provinces,[16] so early as the end of the
seventeenth century; but more than a hundred years elapsed before the
unnatural and debasing custom became fashionable in England: and we find
that late in the eighteenth century it was considered so objectionable,
that few persons, excepting in those rare cases where danger was imminent,
ever permitted "a medical man" to usurp the duties of the midwife: and it
is only within the last fifty years that _man_-midwifery has prevailed in
these kingdoms. Indeed Dr. Ramsbotham, in 1845, in the preface to his work
on obstetric medicine and surgery, alludes to the difficulty which it
would appear had not even then been entirely got rid of, in overcoming the
very natural aversion of women to the regulations of midwifery practice as
laid down in the many swollen and prurient treatises on the "pretended
art."
Nothing appears more extraordinary, or more opposed to all our
preconceived notions of propriety, than that this _man_ should bustle into
the marriage chamber, our holy of holies, with so much privileged
assurance, and that the world should look upon the affair with such
perfect indifference. But we suppose that his presence is a necessary
evil, and the whole proceeding quite a matter of course, in which
"sensible people" see no harm whatever; _honi soit qui mal y pense_. Some
such train of ideas may have been suggested by the arrival of Dr. A. B. or
C., M.D. and accoucheur, whom you, perhaps, still young in the world's
ways, have summoned, you know not why, but that you had been told, it may
be by your wife's mother, that it was absolutely necessary to engage a
fashionable "ladies' doctor" to "attend" your first born's introduction
into the world; in fact, you began to have grave doubts whether it would
be possible for the child to arrive without the doctor; (you may have
since ascertained, much to the chagrin of A. B. or C., M.D. and
accoucheur, that such an event is not altogether beyond the circle of
probabilities.) You have also hired a "month nurse," _recommended by the
doctor_ as an experienced and skilful woman, in every way fitted for her
office. The critical moment approaches; in a state of nervous excitement
and anxiety you are advised to retire to the drawing-room, which, like a
fool, you do. From time to time you are assured that all is going on as
well as possible, and at length you are gratified by the intelligence that
you are a father. You are, of course, utterly ignorant of all that has
been done, what the nurse's share of duty may have been, and what the
doctor's, although you have perchance a sort of vague and undefined
suspicion that you were wrong in leaving all that you held dearest in the
hands of a stranger, and that stranger a _man_, at a moment when she, the
loved one, required your presence to comfort, console, and strengthen her
in the hour of trial. Nor would your ignorance be enlightened, unless, as
we did after years of credulity and miserable evasion, you catechise the
doctor. Then will break upon you, in all their horrible reality, the
indignities to which you have subjected her for whom you would have given
life itself, the purest of the pure, the idol of your love, the very
essence of your being, your heart of hearts! Then, indeed, will you
repent, when it is all too late, your folly in trusting to the candour of
Dr. A. B. or C., M.D., and the actual crime which you have committed in
not acquainting yourself, _while there was yet time to prevent it_, with
the "process" by which the _man_-midwife pretends to improve upon the
all-powerful machinery of nature, and the infinite wisdom of nature's God.
In the bitterness of your thoughts you may, perhaps, venture to question
the doctor's mode of proceeding, upon the supposition that the nurse,
having been recommended by him as a skilful and competent person, should
alone have _actively_[17] interfered, when you may be truculently told
that he was not there "only to stand by and make reports;" or that "an
accoucheur is not necessarily an old woman;" that "there are no
feelings;"[18] that "the first thing he always does, when he comes to the
bed-side, is to make _an examination per vaginam_!" with other
observations equally harrowing to the sensibilities of a husband.
What shock so terrible to a man who, rejoicing in the delightful sentiment
of a wife's purity, discovers that all he held dearest and most sacred,
all which he would shield from profanation with the last drop of his
life's blood, has been invaded by the presence, and _violated by the
actual contact_ of the _man_-midwife? The doctor may be a sober, discreet,
oily man, of staid appearance, and a very pattern of propriety; or he may
be a vulgar, low-bred person, in his leisure consorting with those of a
similar bent; or
"Yonder a vile physician, blabbing
The case of his patient...;"
or he may be a tippling, jovial fellow, who at some roystering party is
always called on for "a good song," sure to have as its theme wine, love,
and woman,--for accoucheurs are mortals like other men; or he may be some
tyro in "the art," just let loose from his course of walking the
hospitals, strong in syphilitic cases, and with all the recollections of a
young surgeon's life fresh upon him: nevertheless, whatever he be, _the
very inmost secrets of your wife's person_ are known to him,[19] the veil
of modesty has been rudely torn aside, and the sanctity of marriage exists
but in the name.
----"Such an act,
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty;
Calls virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And sets a blister there; makes marriage vows
As false as dicer's oaths: oh, such a deed,
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow;
Yea this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act."