[65] We know a case in point, where a lady was anxious to engage a midwife who had been recommended to her as perfectly competent to perform her office without the intervention of the man-midwife, but the latter would not hear of this, and insisted on the substitution of one of his “own nurses.” It is easy to perceive the reason of this manœuvre. Had the original midwife attended, she would have undertaken the operation, and the importance of the man-midwife would have been materially lessened. The lady’s delicacy and comfort were not of sufficient weight to counterbalance this consideration. Ex uno disce omnes.
[66] “In 1848 sixty-one mothers died to every 10,000 children born alive. Since that year the mortality has progressively declined, as follows:—58, 55, 53, 52, 50, down to 47 in 1854. This is a gratifying result, and there can be no doubt that by further care and skill, especially by training up a class of educated nurses, the deaths in child-birth may be largely reduced from their present high number, 3009.”—Medical Times and Gazette.
[67] So far from the presence of a man-midwife being a source of consolation or assurance to the sufferer, as Dr. Ramsbotham alleges, we have it on the authority of a lady, the mother of many children, that on three occasions, when the “doctor” was not present, her labours were much easier, and in all respects more thoroughly natural and happy in their results; than on those in which the man-midwife officiated; and further, that the very ring of the bell announcing the arrival of the hated accoucheur has frequently “put back” the pains of labour.
[68] Before we laugh at this short-sighted folly and cruelty, which supposes that the interests of the two sexes can possibly be antagonistic, instead of being inseparably bound up together, we must recollect that we have had some specimens of the same feeling in our own country, as, for instance, the opposition to the female school at Marlborough House, and the steady opposition of the inferior part of the medical profession to all female practitioners. That some departments of medicine are peculiarly suited to women, is beginning to strike the public mind. I know that there are enlightened and distinguished physicians both here and in France who take this view of the subject, though the medical profession as a body entertain a peculiar dread of all innovation, which they resist with as much passive pertinacity as Boards of Guardians and London Corporations.”—Mrs. Jameson’s “Communion of Labour,” p. 40.
“When educated gentlemen set an example of selfishness and exclusiveness, it is only to be expected that the working classes should follow it, and so the greed of man is the degradation of woman.”—North British Review, No. 52, p. 837.
[69] “According to Osborne’s testimony, instruments are used dangerously in parturition, one thousand one hundred and seventy-six times in every twelve hundred cases; and the same author, in his reprobation of Denman’s culpable and inconsiderate introduction of them into practice, makes this memorable remark: ‘I must believe that he must have forgotten THE MANY UNHAPPY EFFECTS which have come from their use to our mutual knowledge, even when they had been in the hands of very experienced and skilful men.’”—The Author of “The Death-blow to Man-midwifery,” quoting Osborne’s “Essays.”
[70] “The conduct of medical men in all former ages proves still farther that which we would establish (that the profession of man-midwife is repugnant to nature). If they required information on the state of their female patients, it was to the midwives they applied. The midwife, therefore, passed for the eye of the doctor, because it was through her ministration that he assured himself of what he neither committed to his own examination or to that of another man.”—Hecquet “De l’Indecence aux Hommes d’accoucher les Femmes,” page 6.
[71] Albertus Magnus de Secretis Mulierum. Ed. Amst. 1662, p. 85.
[72] The man-midwife usually intimates his wish to make the examination per vaginam, through the medium of the nurse of his own recommendation, and should the patient, struck with the daring impropriety of his request, desire to inform her husband of the infamous proposal, the nurse dissuades her by saying, that “husbands are not supposed to understand these things,” and that she will probably destroy both her own life, and that of her child, by refusing to submit to it! After this the accoucheur soon triumphs, the examination is effected without further remonstrance, and the victim is irretrievably entangled in his insidious toils.
[73] Roberton, Apology, page 470.