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

Objection the Second.

The art of midwifery being equally noble for its subject as for its end, since it is the only one which enjoys the prerogative of saving, at one operation of the hand, more than one individual at once; ought the less noble sex to dispute pre-eminence in it with the men? On tracing things back to the remotest distance of times, it must be allowed, that if the women, through a mistaken modesty, in those times of ignorance and simplicity, commonly made use of midwives, it may be presumed there were also men-practitioners employed in difficult cases.

ANSWER.

Readily granting that the art is a noble one; noble in its subject and ends: all that I am surprised at is, that the men did not find it out sooner. Probably the nobility of this art is only begun to be sounded so high by the men, till they discovered the possibility of making it a lucrative one to themselves. Then indeed the ignorance and incapacity of the poor women for it, came all of a sudden to be doubted and despised. The art with all its nobility was for so many ages thought beneath the exercise of the noble sex: it was held unmanly, indecent, and they might safely have added impracticable for them. But had even any of the medical profession not thought so, there is great reason to think the rest of mankind would have viewed their interested endeavors to usurp this province from the female sex, in the light they deserve. It was only for the eternal fondness which prevails among the French for novelties, that paved the way for the admission of so dangerous and indecent an one, as that of men making a common practice of midwifery, and taking it out of the women’s hands, to which it was so much more natural.

I am here far from wishing to enter into a contest with the men, on the superiority and excellence they assume over the women; though not quite so indisputable perhaps as is commonly imagined. All that I contend for, to the purpose of the present question, is, that there are certain employments and vocations, which are generally and naturally more proper for one sex than for another. A woman would seem to aim at something above her sex, that would set up an academy for teaching to fence, or ride the great horse: but a man sinks beneath his sex, who interferes in the female province. It is not with quite so good a grace as a woman that he would spin, make beds, pickle and preserve, or officiate as a midwife. Be this observed without impeachment of the superiority of men.

Open books, sacred and profane, you will find that the Egyptians were not so simple as Dr. Smellie would give us to understand they were; when in the beginning of his introduction, pages 1st and 2d, he grants us, out of his special grace and favor, “that in the first ages the practice of the art of midwifery was altogether in the hands of women, and that men were never employed but in the utmost extremity: indeed (says he) it is natural to suppose, that while the simplicity of the early ages remained, women would have recourse to none but persons of their own sex, in diseases peculiar to it: accordingly we find that in Egypt midwifery was practised by women.”

According to scripture, however, the sorcerers of Egypt were not so very simple neither, since they had art enough to imitate some of the miracles of Moses, in transforming their rods into serpents, blood into water, and covering the land with frogs[^[1]]. All this did not favor of simplicity.

The Egyptians[^[2]] have ever passed for the most intelligent and enlightened of all the other nations of the earth, who respected them as oracles of wisdom and sound philosophy. They are the first people who established systematically rules of good government. This profound and serious nation saw early the true end of human policy; and virtue being the principal foundation and cement of all society, they industriously cultivated it. At the head of all virtues they placed that of gratitude. The honor attributed to them of being the most grateful of men, shews that they were also the most social. They had an inventive genius: their Mercuries, who filled Egypt with surprizing discoveries, scarce left any thing wanting to the perfection of their understanding, or to the convenience and happiness of life. The first people among whom libraries were known to exist, is that of Egypt. In short, so far from being simple or ignorant, they excelled in all the sciences. There were indeed among them no men-midwives; but to make up for this deficiency, they had, it seems, excellent midwives.

Besides it is even ridiculous to confine the practice of midwifery by females only to early ages. Who does not know, that it was so in all ages, and in all countries, till just the present one, in which the innovation has crept into something of a fashion into two or three countries. The exceptions before, or any where else, to the general rule, are so few, that they are scarce worth mentioning.

But to return to the so simple Egyptians. We read in Exodus, chap. i. v. 15. and following, that Pharaoh said to the midwives, “When ye do the office of midwife to the Hebrew women, and set them upon the stools, if it be a son then ye shall kill him, but if it be a daughter she shall live.

“17. But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men-children alive.”

The king reproached them, as may be seen in the same place.

Why did not Pharaoh give the same order to the men-midwives, if there had been any such employed in difficult or extraordinary pains? (as Mr. Smellie supposes.) Or rather, if the king had not thought it too unnatural for women to be delivered by men, he certainly would not have failed to have commanded it, especially on perceiving that the midwives had deceived him. This would have been a fine occasion to have forbidden them their function, and for the men-practitioners to have come into vogue. The men would certainly have been of the two not the improperest to have executed the intentions of the tyrant: as tender-heartedness is surely not more the character of their sex, than of the women. Besides, their instruments would have served admirably to have thinned the species, without distinction of the sexes. They might also have concealed the barbarity of the murders by such instruments, under the pretext of their necessity from hard-labors, as the midwives excused their disobedience under that of easy ones, which had rendered their aid superfluous.