Various other points might be mentioned in which there is honest disagreement of opinion among hydropathists. This must, in the nature of the case, be so. Nor should such disagreements make us enemies toward each other. One thing is remarkable, and speaks volumes for the new method, namely, the good success that everywhere attends it.
Respecting our third question—Shall we employ a physician on occasions of childbirth? I remark that people should, themselves, be the judges. If you possess the courage that I have seen exhibited among the peasantry of the Silesian mountains of Germany, you may get along almost without an assistant of any kind. There childbirth is looked upon in a light very different from what we see in our own country. If, moreover, you can, by great and continuous effort, arrive at the degree of physical hardihood and strength which is possessed by those vigorous, out-of-door working females to whom I have referred, then you may, as a general thing, get along safely without the aid of a physician. But things are different with us here; we are not to expect that our females will, for generations to come, be as hardy and enduring as the peasant women of many parts of the old world.
In this country we find that the younger married people are more apt than the older to resort to water-treatment in childbirth. I imagine I am addressing myself to a young couple, who hope soon to become parents. They have talked the matter over, and resolve that they will try to get along without a doctor of any kind. I say to them, Young friends, you are about to pass through a matter which you can know but very little about beforehand. Would it not be safer to get a physician into your house, at least? Pay him for his time accordingly as you are able, and, mark my word, he will be very willing to stay in the parlor, kitchen, anywhere, if you do not need him. If it be in the night, get him off to bed, and tell him you will call him when needed. Thus you will both feel safer than if he were away. You might need him very much before morning, and possibly when it would be too late to get him from a distance. Once the birth is over, and the mother rested a little, he will allow at least a tepid sponging; and the word tepid allows a good deal of latitude, so that the water may be taken quite cool. Besides, too, once you have got the liberty to do it, you can repeat it often. By so doing the doctor will be astonished to find how well you get along.
Should male or female physicians be employed in midwifery? This is a bone of contention with many. The facts are these: the world got along anciently very well without physicians, or, at most, with those only who were rude and untaught in schools. I do not know that we have statistics enough to prove much in regard to the question, as to whether the world is more thriving with or without physicians; and as to whether male or female midwives are more successful, the great Dr. Rush—who was certainly a most candid and liberal-minded man, and in all particulars not only in favor of human right, but of “woman’s rights,” of which we nowadays hear so much—tells us “that it appears from the bills of mortality in London and Dublin, that about one in seventy of those women die in childbirth who are in the hands of female midwives; but from the accounts of the lying-in-hospitals in those cities which are under the care of man-midwives, only one in a hundred and forty perishes in childbirth.” But admit that the female doctors in those cities are not properly educated, or so well educated in their calling as the men are—a thing, however, which does not appear—it is not yet proved to us that males should not practice in this department.
The broad ground I take on this subject is this: educate THE PEOPLE in all matters pertaining to health; let physiology and hygiene be taught at the fireside and in the schools as much as any other science. At a proper age let both sexes throughout be taught all that may be concerning pregnancy and childbirth; and, all this accomplished, let those of both sexes practice whom skill, talent, and experience dictate. Educate the PEOPLE, and they will find out soon enough who are the most competent, and who are not, to practice the healing art.
As to the talk we hear so much of at this day about the indecency of man-midwifery, it is idle twattle, that scarce needs a remark. Indecent for a man to get up of a cold, wet night, and attend a poor, suffering woman in labor, and night after night, as not unfrequently happens! Indecent for us to resort to the use of instruments with which to destroy the life of the unborn child, in order to save that of the mother, as must sometimes, with the best possible management, be done! Away with all such foolishness, and the worse than false modesty which dictates it! They ought to take shame on themselves who utter it.
Yes, friends, I will tell you in a word how I feel in this matter. When I was born, my most worthy mother was very young. I was her first child. And since I have come to years of understanding, and often when I have attended women in childbirth, I have thought it was not possible for me to be thankful enough to that good old man—and who is yet living—for attending my mother at my birth, young and inexperienced as she was; and although I know that I could now teach him some things, which in his hoary age he does not at all understand, I have yet often felt in my heart that I would go leagues long to take him by the hand, that I might thank him for the good he had done.
Depend upon it, friends, there are only two things that can induce men to practice midwifery; and these are, first, that it may be necessary for a man so to do, in order to get his living; and, secondly, if he be a benevolent man, he will most gladly relieve suffering, if he can be the means of doing so. And do not physicians, almost to a man, the world over, attend the poor in childbirth, gladly and willingly, when they know they are to receive from them no pay whatever, except such as God gives them?
Is it said that man-midwifery leads to licentiousness? I answer, go to the veterans of the “godlike art”—those who have toiled long and hard in their calling, and who will not consent to relinquish it so long as their powers of body will allow them to pursue it, and ask them to tell you candidly, if the practice of midwifery has made them bad and unprincipled men? Mark, they will tell you, “No; but rather our knowledge of woman’s sufferings, and the pains and perils which we have but too well and sadly often learned that it is her lot to endure, have chastened us, and made us more what we ought to be.”
Suppose that now and then it may happen—as a rare exception to the rule, it is true—that a physician conducts himself in a lascivious way before a patient, are we for this reason to call all physicians bad men? Do we not also hear of bad men among clergymen? And because there is now and then a bad one in the clerical profession, are we to scout them altogether, and say they shall never preach to or converse with women?