A Treatise on the Art of Midwifery / Setting Forth Various Abuses Therein, Especially as to the Practice With Instruments: the Whole Serving to Put All Rational Inquirers in a Fair Way of Very Safely Forming Their Own Judgement Upon the Question; Which It Is Best to Employ, in Cases of Pregnancy and Lying-in, a Man-midwife; Or, a Midwife

by Elizabeth Nihell

Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

A
TREATISE
ON THE
ART of MIDWIFERY.
SETTING FORTH
Various Abuses therein,
Especially as to the
Practice with Instruments:
THE WHOLE
Serving to put all Rational Inquirers in a fair Way of very safely forming their own Judgement upon the Question;
Which it is best to employ,
In Cases of Pregnancy and Lying-in,
A
MAN-MIDWIFE;
OR, A
MIDWIFE.

By Mrs. ELIZABETH NIHELL,

Professed Midwife.

LONDON:

Printed for A. Morley, at Gay’s-Head, near Beaufort Buildings, in the Strand.

Mdcclx.

---

TO
All Fathers, Mothers
and likely soon to be Either.

Though the subject of the following sheets is of such universal importance, that it would be difficult to name that human individual, to whom it does not in some measure relate, you, it doubtless, more immediately concerns.

Under no protection then so properly as yours can a work be put, not presumingly calculated to determine your judgment, but only to recommend to you the examination of a point, in which Nature would have such just reproaches to make to you, for cruelty to yourselves, if you was indolently to determine yourselves either without an examination, or on a blind implicit confidence in others; in others, perhaps, interested to mislead you. This last advertence of mine will, more than all that I could offer besides, prove to you my sincere unaffected with for your favorable acceptance of this essay of mine, on the footing of absolutely no interest but purely yours. And that interest how dear! how sacred! How indispensably ought it to challenge your preference almost to any other interest of your own, and much more surely to any of others.

Happily then for you, in a matter of such common concernment to human-kind, Nature has not been so unjust, nor so unprovident as to place a competent notion of it out of the reach of common sense.

Deign then, for your own sakes, to examine it by that light of Reason, the spring of which is for ever in yourselves. It cannot fail of affording you a sufficient certainty on which to rest your opinion, in a point upon which it is of such deep, such tender importance to you, not to form your resolutions on a wrong one. In virtue of such your own fair examination, the decision will no longer be dangerously and precariously that of others for you, no longer be nothing better than a lightly adopted prejudice, but become truly and meritoriously the genuine result of your own judgment.

But whatever your decision may be, at least to me you can hardly impute it as an offence, my seeking to supply you with matter, whereon to exercise that judgment of yours in so interesting a point. At the worst, I have the consolation of being in my duty, while thus aiming, however deficiently, at proving that with the most tender regard and unfeigned zeal.

I am, respectfully,

Your most devoted, and

most faithful humble servant,

Elizabeth Nihell.

Haymarket,

Feb. 21, 1760.