As to the discouragement of proper women from applying themselves to the profession, it can only cease by the concurring of those, on whom the choice out of either sex occasionally depends, to restore things to their antient channel: and that will in course, for their own sakes, follow on their ceasing to be imposed upon by the false pretences of the men-practitioners. But this is a point upon which I am too much a party to be heard, though even as no more than an advocate, and much less as a judge. All I shall then presume to say is, that I very readily leave the decision of the question to Reason, that inward oracle in every one’s breast; an oracle, which, in a cause so interesting to human Nature, can never return a false answer, where consulted by those who deserve to find the truth by sincerely seeking it, with a firm design to sacrifice to it the poor vanity of defending a prejudice, or any other interest of the passions. And surely there can hardly exist a point of more capital importance to Society, than the determining, what however one would imagine not very difficult to determine, on which side in this profession of midwifery particularly, the superiority of auxiliary power may be expected, on that, where there is evidently a great deal of Nature, assisted with a little but a competency of Art, or on that, where what there is of Art is most barbarously abused, and without any Nature at all.
The END.
[1]. Exod. Chap. vii. and viii.
[2]. Diod. Sic. Herodotus.
[3]. The Commentator on Boerhave’s Lectures, vol. V. p. 252. or §. 694. says, “At Paris women are taken into the Hôtel Dieu, fifteen days before their lying-in, at the public expence, so that the business of midwifery can be no where better learn’d.”
[4]. It is evidently this universal influence of the Uterus over the whole animal system, in the female sex, that Plato has in view in that his description of it, which Mr. Smellie (introd. p. 15) calls odd and romantic, from his not making due allowance for the figurative stile of that florid author. Thus the diffusion of the energy of the uterus, Plato calls its “wandering up and down thro’ the body.” A power of activity which, towards conquering the otherwise natural coldness of the female constitution, nature would hardly give to the uterus merely to excite in women a desire, sanctified under due restrictions, by her favorite end, that of propagation, if she had not, at the same time, endowed that uterus with an instinct, beneficial by its influence in the preservation of the issue of that desire. And the real truth is, that there is something that would be prodigious, if any thing natural could be properly termed prodigious, in that supremely tender sensibility with which women in general are so strongly impressed towards one another in the case of lying-in. What are not their bowels on that occasion? It may not be here quite foreign to remark, in support of the characteristic importance of the uterus or the womb, that in the antient Saxon language the word Man or Mon equally signified one of the male or female sex, as Homo in Latin. But for distinction-sake the male was called Weapon-man, (not however for any offensive weapon or instrument in midwifery;) and the female Womb-man, or man with an uterus: from whence by contraction the word woman.
[5]. Smellie. Treatise of midwifery, p. 339. where it appears, that the above dress is reserved for a man-midwife’s masquerade-habit in private practice, before ladies, not to frighten them; whereas to the poor women in hospitals his looking like a butcher, is it seems necessary, with bases and an apron; the steel of course. But if it is not too presumptuous for me to offer so learned a gentleman as the Dr. a hint of improvement for his man-practitioner’s toilette, upon these occasions, I would advise, for the younger ones, a round-ear cap, with pink and silver bridles, which would greatly soften any thing too masculine in their appearance on a function which is so thoroughly a female one. As to the older ones, a double-clout pinned under their chin could not but give them the air of very venerable old women.
[6]. If a man happens by great chance to have long taper fingers, it is a circumstance so uncommon, that it is proverbially said of him, “He has rare midwife’s fingers.” Nor was it quite unhumorously observed of one of the founders of the sect of instrumentarians in England, remarkable for a raw-boned coarse, clumsy hand, that no forceps he could invent of iron or steel, being more likely to hurt than his fingers, he had, at least, that excuse for recommending instruments.