“Observation 187. I was sent for to lay Madam de ... about fifteen leagues from Valognes, the place of my residence, and there was at the same time a surgeon of the town where I then was, who had been fetched to lay a woman that had been in labor from the day before, whose child presented the vertex: he, without further examination, put her into a convenient posture, and with his crotchet brought away the child at several pulls, with much pain and labor, and threw it under the bed, with the after-birth, in the most severe season of the year: after which, the operator hugged himself prodigiously, for having so happily accomplished so difficult a labor. Having rested a little, and just as he was going, a woman curious, bethought herself of seeing whether it was a boy or girl: she found the poor child yet alive, though so mangled with the crotchet, and that after having remained, in this condition, an hour and a half, without its having been in the power of so violent an operation, or of the rigor of the weather to terminate a life which seemed to have held out against so many barbarities, only to reproach the detestable operator with the enormity of his crime. The child was christened and died soon after.
“Reflexion. This is what may be called a cruel ignorance, &c.”——To the which I add, that if this wretched operator had had the patience to wait some time, the child would in all probability have come naturally with any the least help of the hand at every throw of the mother: for she had not been over-time in labor, and the head was not, it seems, stuck in the passage.
“Observation 196, p. 274. I was desired to go to Cherbourg to lay a poor woman there, whom a surgeon and a man-midwife by profession, belonging to that place, had given over.... I found the woman in a condition hard to describe, with an arm and a leg of her child pulled off, and the remainder of the body left behind in the mother’s womb. I put her into posture, and instantly delivered her of one child (it seems she went with twins) who had only an arm plucked off: I then sought out the other, whose leg had been torn away. Strange and fatal sight, which was seen by more than twenty women present, all ready to swear to the truth of this! I left the woman to their care, after having delivered her of the after-birth. She had been as much hurt as the children, of whom nothing remained in the uterus, by the care I took to evacuate it. I left the mother tolerably well considering her condition.”
Reflexion. This was the more surprizing, for that the first operator was an old practitioner, who had been an out-surgeon to the Hôtel Dieu above eight years, before M. De la Motte was apprentice there. Yet this man neither was sensible of the being twins in the case, nor had dexterity enough in the manual function. Here I ask, could the most ignorant midwife have acquitted herself worse than this man?
“Observation 185. A tradesman’s wife of Valognes being taken in labor sent for a midwife. A little while after her coming, the membranes burst, the waters were discharged, and the child presented an arm. The midwife required help. (Probably she might be one of the ignorant and unskilful ones) and two surgeons were sent for, who passed for being the most expert ones in the town. They begun with plucking off the arm that presented, though the child was alive. The other arm, as soon as they got hold of it, underwent the same fate. After which they struck the crotchet into a rib, which they brought away, then two, then three, and, at length, struck the crotchet into the back-bone, and pulled so cleverly together, that they brought the child away doubled up. The midwife delivered her of the after-birth, and notwithstanding all this ill usage, the woman recovered; but it was a long while first.”
Reflexion. (Mr. De la Motte’s own) “Was there ever a crueller operation seen both for the mother and child; the first terribly torn, the other barbarously dismembered?”
“Observation 186. The wife of a tallow-chandler of this town was taken in labor: the waters were discharged, after which an arm of the child presented. Help was sent for; one of the two operators (mentioned in the foregoing observation) came with his servant and crotchet. He began his operation, by plucking off the arm of this certainly live child, then, without further examination, he strikes the crotchet into its body, and pulled, without being able to bring away any thing. The master, whose strength was exhausted, made his pupil help him, and they both pulled as hard as they could: still nothing came, and I verily believe that the master would have called in some body else to his assistence, if the handle of the crotchet had been long enough, or that the poor woman had not given up the ghost under the cruel torments they made her suffer, to such a degree that they forced her to part with her life, sooner than with her child.
“Reflexion. Here was a delivery in intention, but the execution had something horrid, and perfectly odious in it. I never could have imagined, that two men could have pulled in this manner, without dislocating the bones of the woman into whom the crotchet had been struck: for so it was shown to be, upon the body being opened, in which the child was found with an arm plucked off, entangled in the umbilical chord round its neck, without the least mark of the crotchet upon its body: too plain a proof this of the crotchet having been struck into the mother and not the child, and consequently of the little circumspection, not to say rage, with which the surgeon had acted upon the body of this unhappy creature: for surely it must be granted, that it could be no part of the child that could have resisted the terrible efforts made both by master and man, jointly to bring it away; and yet this was one of the BEST[[30]] operators in the country for HELPING women in labor.
“I could make a VOLUME of these histories, if they were good for any thing but to excite horror.” Such is the witness born by M. De la Motte, as to the ablest men-midwives of his time, in all his province. Now in order to invalidate the conclusion, so natural to be drawn from so unexceptionable an attestation, against the superiority of the practice of the men to that of the women, will it be said, that the men-practitioners, in this country, are in general better educated than such operators as have been above shown? If so great a falsity should be advanced, let the reader himself reflect on what he may easily find to be the common method of training up of men-pupils in this art. I have in the first part of this work, stated some reasons for their insufficiency, both in study and practice; and the more this point is examined, the more clear will that undoubted truth appear, that if the ignorant midwives are, as they undoubted are, a great evil, they are even blessings in comparison to the generality of the men-practitioners, bred up with the help of artificial Dolls, pretty prints, or even of their personal visitation of those miserable wretches hired, or under the mask of charity, forced to undergo, from apprentices or pupils, so many inhuman tortures and outrages in vain.
It will also perhaps be said, as to the examples I have just produced from M. De la Motte, that since his time, that is to say, about the beginning of this century, that the art of midwifery has received so much improvement, as to cancel all impressions of fear from such examples. Yes! It has received improvement with a vengeance. If a vain endeavour to perfect instruments, impossible to be perfected, or against common sense to suppose, even when perfected superior to skilful hands, are an improvement, then the art may be called improved. In the mean time, infinite is the mischief done by so many pretending operators, with each his bag of hard-ware at hand, his only proof of superiority to a woman, in practice, confiding in those instruments. Their negative damage is almost as great as their actual one. For by occasioning the men, and even ignorant midwives to trust to the calling in their help, the methods of predisposing of the women to parturition, the proper precautions, and actual manual function in the labor-pains, which is a point of the utmost importance, are at best but slightly and prefunctorily, consequently not sufficiently, performed, or perhaps wholly neglected. And why? because the instruments, the crotchet, the tire-tête, the forceps, are considered as sure reserves to remedy such deficiencies. This, besides many other reasons, encourages the indolence, carelessness, and inattention of the men-practitioners, and even of the midwives, especially of those poor suborned creatures recommended by the men-practitioners, paid, as one may say in some sense, not to do their work so well, as that none should be left for their honorable patrons. Thence it has happened, that where an ignorant midwife has, through her unskilfulness, or for whatever other reason, been wanting in predisposing the passage, or lapsed the critical moments of the manual aid, so that she really is or pretends to be out of her depth, by the exigence being beyond her ability; the man-midwife is called in, who, with his instruments, forces that delivery, which might, if justice had been done to the patient, have proceeded in a natural way, with much less pain and danger. Be this remarked, without my speaking here of the extraordinary tortures and outrages, such as M. De la Motte himself has related. The woman then is, by the help of instruments, delivered by the man-midwife so called in. “If he had but staid a few minutes longer, both mother and child must have been lost”. So believes the father of the child, so believes the mother, so believe most of the parties concerned, and what is more, sometimes so believes the man-midwife himself. Though the strict truth has been, that the greatest part of the pain the mother endured, and every appearance of danger, either to her or to her child, were positively owing to nothing but the negligence and mispractice used, either by man or woman-practitioner, in reliance, if matters should come to the worst, on the supplemental aid or reparation of errors, by those miserable instruments, which constitute all the boasted improvements of an art, the true nicety and requisite accuracy of which they are so much more calculated to banish or destroy.