“‘In Morocco the women suffer so little, that they frequently go through the duties of the house on the day after their delivery, with the child on their back.
“‘One respectable traveller assures us, that with the native Africans labour is so easy, and trusted so entirely to nature, that no one knows of its existence till the woman appears at the door of the hut with the child.
“‘Another, equally respectable, tells us, that as soon as an American Indian woman bears a child, she goes into the water and immerses it and herself.[76] One evening he asked an Indian where his wife was: he replied: “I suppose she has gone into the woods to set a trap for birds.” In about an hour she returned with a new-born infant in her arms, and holding it up exclaimed: “Here, Englishman, here is a young warrior!” Were it necessary, many more instances might be brought forward. But it has been said, this occurs only in warm climates, where the heat relaxes the parts concerned in parturition. This objection is not consistent with truth, for the natives of Livonia, and the savages of North America, retire to some private place, and return immediately after their delivery to their customary work; and the Greenlanders do all their common business just before, and very soon after their labour, and a still-born or deformed child is seldom seen or heard of among them. Still further to establish the assertion that human parturition is not necessarily a process of danger, we know that in this country servant girls, who become illegitimately pregnant, very often absent themselves for an hour or two, and, after giving birth to a child, return to the discharge of their household duties immediately.[77] It is, therefore, obvious that the difficulty and danger that so often attend child-bearing in civilized society,[78] are attributable, principally, to unnatural customs and habits of living, in which, women, in this and other countries, indulge from their infancy,[79] and which operate by preventing the constitution from acquiring its proper firmness and vigour, and by producing a weak, feeble, and irritable state of body, &c.’” Dr. Johnson adds: “This is the language of Dr. Conquest—a metropolitan accoucheur physician of much eminence—a man who, from the long and successful practice of his profession, has deservedly acquired wealth and distinction—a man, therefore, who can afford to be honest—a man who, unlike Archdeacon Paley, can afford to keep a conscience. With those, therefore, who put their trust in authority rather than in the light of their own reason—that is to say, with nine hundred and ninety-nine persons out of every thousand—the opinions of such a man as Dr. Conquest cannot fail to have more than ordinary weight.”[80]
In the foregoing pages we have sought to place before our readers, in the clearest light, the opinions of Roussel and other eminent men, touching the practice of man-midwifery; opinions the force and truth of which, based as they are upon principles of the purest morality, and the sound doctrines of physical science, cannot be controverted or denied. We have shown that the Royal College of Physicians, so lately as the year 1827, designated the practice of man-midwifery as “an art foreign to the habits of gentlemen of enlarged academical education,” and one which might safely be entrusted to discreet matrons. We have, in confirmation of these opinions, quoted the sentiments expressed by Sir Anthony Carlisle, late President of the College of Surgeons, who styles the boasted “art” “a pretence,” and accoucheurs “mere nurses.” We have proved, by the admission of men-midwives themselves, that the great majority of cases of midwifery would do well under the eye of a nurse, and that skilled midwives would be a benefit in every community. We have before our eyes the example of France with her schools of midwifery; and against the arguments and dispassionate opinions of men of the highest rank in the medical profession, mooted as they have been at various times, and in different countries, yet all tending to the same conclusion, we find absolutely nothing but the self-interested doctrine of an anomalous class[81] of medical men, whose policy it is, for the furtherance of their own selfish views, to decry the powers of nature, and to abrogate the employment of females in the sanctuary of child-birth; a doctrine which suffers its disciples, regardless of all delicacy, and in defiance of the contempt of their professional brethren, to prey upon the weakness and natural timidity of the sex, and with presumptuous indecency to arrogate to themselves duties proper only to women; a doctrine which, while it deals an irreparable blow[82] at the very heart of every family, threatens with destruction virtue, modesty, and honour.
Husbands, fathers, countrymen, THINK OF THESE THINGS!
We do most heartily believe that if, unbiassed by the self-interested and fraudulent assertions of quackery and empiricism, you would exert your own reasoning powers on the question, the doom of this abuse would soon be sealed. But as, in many another usage which men individually admit to be blots in that high state of civilization to which we have advanced, our apathy overcomes our desire for their correction, and we let them pass; so, because this wrong has forced its prostituting influence through the length and breadth of the land, magnified and sustained as it is by the terrorism of treatises, and the artistic display of its abettors, despite the warnings of our consciences, we yield ourselves to its guidance, we dare not lift up the veil which conceals its abominations, and even fear, cowards that we are, to question its privileges, privileges which a “damned custom” has accorded; privileges the very thought of which should make the blood curdle in our veins with disgust and horror! For if we for a moment reflect upon the precepts laid down in the indecent farragos of “obstetric science,” and further upon the fact, that these precepts are invariably carried into effect, whenever the “patient” can be induced to submit to the outrages therein enjoined, we must acknowledge that in all such cases purity itself can oppose no effectual barrier to these insidious assaults, and that modesty must fly from the chamber when the man-midwife crosses its threshold.
O hateful, horrible thought! that the young bride, radiant with joyous innocence, and love’s glowing fantasies, “beautiful exceedingly,” and pure as fair, must in a few short months, in blind obedience to a spurious custom, yield herself to the pollution of a stranger’s touch, and banish for ever from her husband’s soul that dear delicious dream, entirety of possession!
This is no exaggerated picture, no overstrained description of that mortal stain which rends into very shreds the charm of delicacy; but a simple truth, a terrible reality, not to be glozed over by the fallacious reasonings of frigid philosophy. O men! if you have the souls of men, if one drop of the old chivalrous blood of your ancestors yet palpitates in your veins, if you have not irrecoverably bowed down to the idol custom, if mammon, lust of gain and power, with all the fell catalogue of vicious inclinations, have left but one cell unoccupied in your heart’s mansion, if you yet hold woman to be the fairest, purest, best of the Creator’s works; oh! let the cry of “out damned spot,” rise heavenward from every home in the United Kingdom; let sacred purity once more assert her rights, let nature’s illimitable powers do their work unaided, undefiled by the sordid infamy of charlatanism, and future generations shall gratefully invoke unnumbered blessings on the memory of those who saved the daughters of England from the curse of a cruel degradation.
THE END.