About eighteen or twenty years ago, Madam Poor, head-midwife of this hospital, delivered a woman of a monster with two heads, with no help but only her fingers and a young prentice. Not an instrument was employed: no man assisted her. The child was christened, and died presently after. The mother remained some months upon recovery, and did perfectly well. This fact requires no proofs, being of such public notoriety. The monster was carried to St. Cosmo’s, where any surgeon may see it. I served my time with this same mistress some years after this kind of prodigy had happened.
As to what I have advanced concerning the procedure in the wards of the lying-in women, should my testimony appear in the least suspicious, I appeal to the justice and veracity of all the doctors in England, who have been at the Hôtel Dieu at Paris, who cannot but confirm what I have said. In the mean time Mr. De la Motte, who passes for an author of credit may certify, the same. Here follows what he says in his preface to his observations, page 2.
“One would think (says this author) from reading the books of Messieurs Mauriceau and Peu, that it was impossible to succeed in the practice of midwifery, without having operated at Paris in the lying-in ward of the Hôtel Dieu. It is true, that this hospital is the best school in Europe, and that I would have ardently wished to have been admitted to the operations of midwifery during the five years I staid in that hospital: but as there is no more than one surgeon only, who is in charge to attend when he is called to consultation with the midwives, and that it is a place which goes only by favor, I was forced to content myself with following in quality of topical surgeon, to the physicians who performed their visits there. So that I followed only, for six months, three physicians in their rounds there, during which time I applied myself to examine the conduct observed by those gentlemen, to preserve the women after their lying-in from the accidents which follow thereon. By this means I made myself amends for my want of recommendation; but I can safely say, that during the six months I was admitted in the above-mentioned quality, there was no more than one extraordinary labor, which was that of a child engaged in the passage, where the presence of a surgeon was required, and which however was terminated without any other help than that of patience. And yet there were (so far back as then) from three hundred and fifty, to four hundred pregnant women, who were all delivered by the apprentices and rarely by the Dame De la Marche, at that time, head midwife of the hospital: so that I am persuaded, that those who boast of having lain a great many women there, exaggerate furiously.”
For me, I dare yet go farther, and will maintain it, that those persons impose upon the public in such boasts: since the naturalized surgeons, those of the nation, those of Paris itself, have no right to come into our ward. There is no one admitted but the surgeon-major, whose place is a place of favor, and rather matter of form than any thing else. Much more then are strangers excluded, and the truth is, that they never did, nor ever do operate there.
As to the reproach which Mr. Smellie makes to us of being interested, I can, for myself, prove that I have delivered gratuitously, and in pure charity, above nine hundred women. I doubt much, whether our critic can say as much, unless he reckons it for a charity, that which he exercised on his automaton or machine, which served him for a model of instruction to his pupils. This was a wooden statue, representing a woman with child, whose belly was of leather, in which a bladder full, perhaps, of small beer, represented the uterus. This bladder was stopped with a cork, to which was fastened a string of packthread to tap it, occasionally, and demonstrate in a palpable manner the flowing of the red-colored waters. In short, in the middle of the bladder was a wax-doll, to which were given various positions.
By this admirably ingenious piece of machinery, were formed and started up an innumerable and formidable swarm of men-midwives, spread over the town and country. By his own confession, he has made in less than ten years nine hundred pupils, without taking into the account the number of midwives whom he has trained up, and formed in so miraculous a manner. See the preface of this author. He speaks of his machine in the first page, and p. 5, of the number of his pupils.
Now as to these worthy pupils, must not they be finely enabled to judge of the situation of women with child, and of that of their fœtus? Must not they be deeply skilled in that branch of anatomy? Must not they acquire a habit of the touch exquisitely nice, exquisitely just, for discerning the proportion and analogy between a mere wooden machine, and a body, sensible, delicate, animated, and well organized?
I hope too that it is an injustice done to that doctor, by those who say that his pupils have too often a way of hurrying out the waters, which can only serve to render the labor more dry, consequently more laborious, and by that means furnish a handle for setting their instruments to work. If this should be so, as once more I hope it is not, may not the bad habit they will have contracted during their pupilship, of drawing the small-beer out of their wooden-woman, have contributed to this method of practice?
In the mean time, does it become a doctor to call us interested, who himself, for three guineas in nine lessons, made you a man-midwife, or a female one, by means of this most curious machine, this mock-woman?