The practice of man-midwifery is one among the noxious weeds which the rank luxuriance of civilization has produced, and since its introduction it has thriven with unrestrained vitality and ever-increasing strength, until at length it spreads its Upas shadow far and wide over our land, and treacherously, mysteriously, and silently distils the poison of its presence deep into the sanctuaries of domestic life. Reader, we will make plain to you the nature and polluting influence of this redundant growth of luxury and vice; and then, with God’s help, may you, and tens of thousands of your fellow-men, swear by all things holy, just, and good, that the hallowed purity of home shall never more be blighted by its deadly shade.
We are accustomed to speak of ourselves as of a highly moral people; and of our manners, habits, and customs as superior to those of other nations; and of our capital as the most civilized city in the world;
“But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of mind,
When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman’s ware or his word?
When the poor are hovell’d and hustled together, each sex like swine,
When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie;
When chalk, and alum, and plaster are sold to the poor for bread,
And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life.
And sleep must lie down armed, for the villanous centre-bits
Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights.
While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps as he sits,
To pestle a poison’d poison behind his crimsoned lights.”
Oh, but, say you, these are not flaws in the crystal, but mere specks upon the mirror, which a little careful polishing may remove with ease. See the propriety, order, and decency of our households; our noble sense of justice, right, and honour; our strict observance of religious duties; the chaste and modest demeanour of our women; and beholding these things, who shall say that we are not a moral people?
To the unreflecting and casual observer, mere outward semblance would appear to justify and confirm this character of our society. Nevertheless there is, beneath the surface of this seeming health, a loathsome canker, eating into the very vitals of home life![1] and we ourselves are sapping the very foundations of morality, and insulting and outraging the most precious feelings of those whom we should love best and cherish most upon earth, by subjecting them to a usage which first robs them of their birthright, modesty, and then deadens, and finally destroys, all perception of their loss; while “moral England,” under the delusion of a falsely termed necessity, endures, and even fosters a pollution, which France, to her honour, now repudiates and abhors!
Believing it to be a fact that ninety-nine men in every hundred are ignorant of the extent of the outrages to which their wives submit, when “attended” by a man-midwife in their “confinements,” we shall, in this essay, endeavour to clear up the mystery which envelopes the proceedings of this class of practitioners, showing by extracts from their own treatises what their “process” is; and having afterwards placed before our readers the opinions and arguments of able and scientific men against such an utter subversion of propriety, we shall, with confidence in the result, leave the question to be decided by the strong voice of public opinion whether this pernicious custom, indecent and degrading as all will admit it to be, shall longer disgrace our country.
The spirit of evil, though not, as in Eden,
“Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve,
Assaying by his devilish art to reach
The organs of her fancy,”
yet, under another shape, was still at his old work at the time when,[2] instead of the ordinary midwife, whose presence would have given rise to scandal, a surgeon[3] was summoned to attend the delivery of Mademoiselle de la Valiere, mistress of Louis XIV., for so powerful was the effect of fashion in these dissolute times, that, soon after the first examples had been given by persons whose rank and condition enabled them to brave public opinion, the Parisian ladies of fashion, throwing aside the veil of modesty, which had from the earliest ages, and in all countries, enjoined female attendance, followed the precedent of this abandoned woman, and the practice of man-midwifery soon became general in the French capital.
The historian well and truly describes the state of society in those evil days, and how the manners of the age became, year by year, more lost to virtue, dignity, and honour, until at length all the better feelings of human nature, even religion itself, became a by-word and a mockery amidst the chaos of the Revolution. “The ante-chambers of Versailles were daily besieged by crowds of titled, yet needy supplicants, who eagerly sought employment, favour, or distinction from the king’s ministers or his mistresses, and mandates issued from them were obeyed without a murmur from Calais to the Pyrenees. What, then, was it which, in a country so profusely endowed with the riches of nature, and inhabited by a race of men so brave, so active, and so enterprising, has led to a convulsion attended with the unspeakable horrors of the French Revolution? The answer is to be found in the previous state of the country, and the general perversion of the national mind; in the oppressions to which the people were subjected, the vices by which the nobles alienated them; the corruptions by which morals were contaminated; the errors with which religion was disfigured; the extent to which infidelity had spread.”[4] “Corruption, in its worst form, had long tainted the manners of the court as well as the nobility, and poisoned the sources of influence. The favour of royal mistresses, or the intrigues of the court, openly disposed of the highest appointments, both in the army, the church, and the civil service. Since the reign of the Roman emperors, profligacy had never been conducted in so open and undisguised a manner as under Louis XV. and the Regent Orleans. From the secret memoirs of the period, which have now been published, it is manifest that the licentious novels, which at that time disgraced French literature, conveyed a faithful picture of the manners of the age.”[5]