“No one (says he) can be ignorant of it’s being no longer the practice in France, or in England, to employ crotchets, or murderous tire-têtes (would this were truth!) in the deliveries, unless for a monstrous or hydrocephalous head, when the bulk of it is so enormous, that there is no possibility of getting it out whole, and especially if the child should be dead.... In my time, (adds this author) every eminent man-midwife had invented different means of extricating himself out of the plunge of such a case, and their reputation grew in proportion to their respective success. Yet, hitherto, I do not know, that either at Paris or at London, they have got such a length, as to take any particular instrument under their protection. Nine years ago, (Mr. Rathlaw continues) I had made a forceps almost wholly of my own invention to extract the fœtus by the head, and it often succeeded well with me. It was, as to its make, a good deal resembling that which Butter describes in the Edinburgh-acts, volume III. art. 20. But mine (proceeds he) seem to possess better proportions, and is certainly of a more handy use, than those which have hitherto appeared.”
Please to observe, that this forceps of Mr. Rathlaw is the same as Palfin’s, or rather as that of Gilles le Doux, excepting only the semilunar hollow cuts in the claws, which Monsieur Duffé, a surgeon of Paris, had contrived in them. The author says, it had often succeeded well with him: he does not say always, and why? most probably because, when he did so often find it of service, that was, only whenever there was no sort of occasion for using it at all. Do not let it here be imagined, that I force an inference. I give my reason. Supposing that such an instrument was necessary to every practitioner, the case for his using it cannot but rarely occur. Now those rare cases where Rathlaw judged his forceps necessary, and in which it failed him, were in all likelihood the true tests of its merit: whereas those other cases, in which he often succeeded, may very well be taken for such as, with hands and patience, might have afforded a better account of them, than the silly superfluous quackery of employing a forceps, unless indeed his hands were too clumsy to attempt it. Otherwise the using instruments, where they sometimes do the work with so much more pain and danger, when the bare hands well conducted would do so much better, remind me naturally enough of what I have seen a pretty master do with a steel-instrument called a zig-zag or fruit-tongs, when, to display it, or out of wantonness, he has catched up fruit with it, that lay fully within the reach of his hand. In this piece of childishness there is however no mischief; whereas the man-midwife, for considerations of lucre, dallies with two lives to pluck at a fruit that is never, I repeat it, never, out of reach of the hand, where that steel-instrument of his, a forceps, can bring it away.
Mr. Rathlaw also tells us of another instrument, of which he gives us an account. He had got the secret from one Velsen, a physician at the Hague. This Velsen had it of Vanderswam, who had been a pupil of Roonhuysen, the inventor of this pretended nostrum, with which he always helped the women in labor, snug under the bed-cloaths, the better to conceal his miraculous secret. He had long promised his pupil to discover it to him.
“In short (says Mr. Rathlaw) one day that Roonhuysen was returning from laying a woman, a burgomaster of Amsterdam came to speak with him: in the hurry Roonhuysen was to receive him, he hid his nostrum-instrument in some apartment. His curious pupil (Vanderswam) who had for several years been watching such an occasion with great eagerness, found it, and took a draught of it. This instrument was in a case with two long steel crotchets, and a piece of whalebone, in the shape of a pipe for smoaking, only shorter, and at one of the ends of which was a piece of steel, of the shape of an acorn, and there was no other instrument in this case.”
If Mr. Velsen is to be believed, it seems, on the one hand, that Roonhuysen made the whole science of midwifery consist in the knowledge and use of this his instrument, since it is there said, that Roonhuysen had promised this pupil of his to teach him the art of midwifery, but taught him nothing of it; and indeed it does not appear, that he had hidden any thing from Vanderswam but this wonderful instrument, with which he used, under the bed-cloaths, to smuggle the child through the difficult passage[[37]].
On the other hand again, it may be judged, that this pretended marvellous instrument was not of effectual enough service to its inventor, unless in those cases where he might as well have done without them, since this very same Roonhuysen made use of crotchets, doubtless, when he found his instrument fail him. O women! women! thus it is that your pretious lives, and that of your children (to say nothing of the additional tortures you are put to, as if those of Nature’s own ordering were not already enough) are trifled with, in practices being tried upon you with such instruments, for which you are besides to pay exorbitantly; and all for what? To increase the practice of some quack, who raises into notice his worthless name, or perhaps swells some work of his, published by way of advertising himself, with the rare boast of having delivered you with an instrument, that has only, not murdered some of you, though it may sometimes perhaps have done you irreparable damage, and will have always occasioned you an unnecessary increase of pain and danger. Is it possible to inculcate this truth too often or too strongly to you?
“There are many people, (adds Mr. Rathlaw) who make a doubt whether this instrument is not the same as that with which the three Chamberlains, brothers, acquired in Ireland and other countries the reputation of being the most eminent men-midwives in the world. In those circumstances in which others employed crotchets, they could, by their manual operation, and with less labor, hasten the delivery of the women in less time, and without the least danger to mother and child.”
I am not unwilling to believe that the three brothers, the Chamberlains, might pass for the most eminent men-midwives in the world, especially in Ireland, where before there never had, as I understand, been seen any practitioners of midwifery but women. As to other countries, these brothers might very easily surpass in skill those, who knew no gentler way of terminating a delivery than by the means of crotchets. Therefore it is that our author adds, that the Chamberlains only made use of the manual operation; he does not add of other instruments. It is a great pity however, that the surgeons of all countries have not yet got hold of, and adopted this marvellous secret of Roonhuysen’s, which would extricate them so gloriously, in their attendance on such difficult labors. They would thereby greatly reduce their armory, from its complex state at present of variety of crotchets, tire-tête, forceps, spoons, blunt hooks, pinchers, fillets, lacs, scissors, incision-knives, and the rest of their tremendous apparatus.
According then to Mr. Rathlaw, the forceps of Roonhuysen was the same as that of the Chamberlains. How he got the secret from them matters not. He only changed the figure of the blade-parts. In short, our author adds, that to him it seems probable, that this instrument has been brought to perfection by the continual experience of men-midwives, who have successively employed it. He pretends himself to have made some alterations in it for the better, but what they are he is not pleased to tells us.
The illustrious Janckius, a great practitioner, mentions another corrected forceps in his dissertation upon the forceps and pinchers, instruments invented by Bingius, a surgeon of Copenhagen, and of their use in difficult labors, printed at Leipsic, 1750, page 211. This forceps resembles mostly that which the celebrated Monsieur Gregoire, senior, first imagined upon the model of Palfin’s tire-tête.