I hope to live to see the day, when innate modesty will be the characteristic of English women; and of course, when a lady will not be more publickly branded with infamy for the most barefaced prostitution, than for the effrontery which will then be necessary to enable a woman wantonly to employ
A MAN-MIDWIFE.
[3] I would by no means be understood to insinuate the most distant reflection on Dr. Hunter’s management. I have not the smallest idea that any of those deaths were in consequence of the least fault in his execution of his business. I only mentioned them to shew that misfortunes may happen with the most able Man-midwife; and therefore that it is cruel to name one or two accidents as proof of a woman’s being unsafe, since they will happen to the first man in the whole world. I look on Dr. Hunter as a most skilful anatomist; able physician; experienced, tender, patient Man-midwife. If it was left to me to call any man to the labour of a woman in imminent danger, and whose life was linked in mine, Dr. Hunter is the man I would send for without a moment’s hesitation, his skill, but, above all, his experience, age, and infirmities, render him the only man proper to be allowed to take liberties with married women. Yet any woman of experience, in my opinion, is infinitely safer than even Dr. Hunter, except in very extraordinary cases.
LETTER III.
In my two last letters, I believe I satisfied those who are open to conviction, that even the best Men-midwives are not so safe as women,—and that the custom is destructive of modesty, and affords those Men-midwives who chuse it, finer seraglios than are in the possession of the most luxuriant Monarchs of the East.
There are bad consequences attending the practice which I have not mentioned. It is productive of danger, and of many evils, even when followed by the most eminent men in London;—who can fix limits then to its pernicious consequences, when a set of raw, unskillful young men are turned loose through this town—round its skirts—and over the whole kingdom, and are received by the credulous multitude with no other recommendation than the words over the door of “⸺, Surgeon and Man-midwife?” Boys think themselves qualified for Men-midwives, by having attended one or two courses of lectures under Doctor Hunter,—or, perhaps, without having heard any lectures at all, or ever having seen a subject anatomized, start from behind an apothecary’s counter—and begin their career, murdering of infants without mercy; and with impunity laying the foundation for cancers, and the most dreadful diseases in women;—not to mention the chance of their ruining the peace of families, by introducing vice and discord, where health and harmony might otherwise have gladdened their serene dwellings.—They know enough of the ways requisite to use force;⸺they have heard female Midwives blamed for allowing tedious labours;⸺they think they will be deemed expert, in proportion to the quickness with which they bring the child into the world,—and the mischiefs they of course give rise to are innumerable! It is not in the nature of things possible that a young man, ever so well qualified by study, can be a safe Midwife—how dreadful then must the situations be of those poor women who are in the hands of the numberless men who practice that business throughout England!⸺The people ignorantly take for granted that the sex constitutes knowledge—insures safety! The truth is, the sex alone is sufficient to render any knowledge destructive in general practice. If the men must be introduced into the privacies of women, I would earnestly recommend it as the most essential qualification requisite to prepare them for the study, that they submit to having their voices made delicate.
And here I should have finished my letter, and the subject, if I had not seen an Essay in the Gazetteer of the 17th, signed “Old Chiron,” which I cannot avoid making some remarks on, before I conclude.
The author of it uses tolerable language, and probably could write pretty well on any other subject. He has done as much as could have been attempted in order to continue the delusive error which blinds mankind. He knew he had not Truth on his side—he has therefore put words together, without argument⸺he has boldly denied, what it is impossible to disprove⸺he has as boldly asserted what never happened—and then laughed-off facts, trusting by ridicule to conceal their existence. The pen of Junius could not defend the women who use men.