Would it not be far better to get rid of both at once? to have women—trained with women, by women—to attend women—trained in all branches of a scientific and practical midwifery education?
But let no one think that real midwifery education can be less complete and thorough for a woman than it ought to be for a man, if women are really to be physician accoucheuses.
And let no one think that two or three courses of lectures—a month, three months, six months at a lying-in institution, conducting twenty, thirty, or one hundred labours—will make a woman into a (real) midwife.
One hundred labours may be normal, requiring no interference but that which a good midwifery nurse can give. The one hundred and first may be abnormal and may cost the patient her life or health, the attendant her reputation and peace, if her education has been nothing but the few lectures, the few weeks, the few labours.
Let us suppose for a moment that, leaving aside the ordinary talk of giving a woman a ‘man’s medical education,’ good or bad, we imagine what a college might be to give the whole necessary training—medical, scientific and practical—to make real midwives, real physician accoucheuses.
There must be first, of course, the lying-in institution, the deliveries conducted by fully qualified head midwives, of whom enough perhaps exist already for this purpose, who will give practical instruction to the pupil midwives at the bedside.
There must be a staff of professors, to give scientific instruction in midwifery, but also in anatomy, physiology, and the like; in pathology and pathological branches; above all, in sanitary science and practice.
Dissections and post-mortem examinations will have to be practised. It need not be said that these must be at a quite different time and place in the ‘course of education’ from the training about the lying-in patients.
Probably all these professors, or nearly all, must at first be men.
Probably in time all these professors, or nearly all, will come to be women.