Early in the next century an Italian lady, Dorotea Bocchi, was actually Professor of Medicine at the University of Bologna,[12] and among the traditions of the same University is preserved the name of Alessandra Gigliani, who, in even earlier times, was a learned student of anatomy.[13]
In the sixteenth century, at Alcarez in Spain, lived Olivia Sabuco de Nantes, who “had a large knowledge of science and medicine,” and whose medical works were printed at Madrid in 1588.[14]
It is clear that in Great Britain at an early period women were commonly found among the irregular practitioners of medicine; and it is equally clear that their male competitors greatly desired to deprive them of the right to practise. In 1421 a petition was presented to Henry V., praying that “no woman use the practyse of fisyk under payne of long emprisonment.”[15] Within a few years after the first incorporation of the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, an Act[16] was passed for the relief and protection of “Divers honest psones, as well men as women, whom God hathe endued with the knowledge of the nature, kind, and operaçon of certeyne herbes, rotes, and waters, and the using and ministering them to suche as be payned with customable diseases, for neighbourhode and Goddes sake, and of pitie and charytie,” because the “Companie and Fellowship of Surgeons of London, mynding onlie their owne lucres and nothing the profit or ease of the diseased or patient, have sued, vexed, and troubled,” the aforesaid “honest psones,” who were henceforth to be allowed “to practyse, use, and mynistre in and to any outwarde sore, swelling, or disease, any herbes, oyntements, bathes, pultes or emplasters, according to their cooning experience and knowledge ... without sute, vexation, penaltie, or losse of their goods.”[17]
This provision clearly referred to general practice other than that of midwifery, which latter branch of the profession was then, as for centuries both before and after, almost exclusively in the hands of women. The very word midwife, with its Latin synonym “obstetrix,” is sufficiently significant on this point, for in neither language has it any masculine equivalent, and the clumsy term “Man-midwife” served, when first needed and used, to mark the general sense of what the writer in the Athenæum forcibly calls “masculine intrusion into that which natural instinct assigns to woman as her proper field of labour;” and this same very suggestive title is the only one which at the present day in legal phraseology distinguishes the male practitioners of this branch of medical art.
From the time of Moses onwards this part of the profession has always been mainly in the hands of women, and in many countries of Europe no other usage has ever prevailed. The first regular French medical society, “La confrairie de St Cosme and St Damien,” included within its organization the Company of Midwives,[18] and from that time down to the present it seems in France to have been the custom to give to these women a regular education, terminating in sufficient examinations, an example which England would have done well to follow.
In this country, however, midwives appear to have held a most respectable position some centuries ago, and a curious idea of their importance, their duties, and their credit, may be gathered from a MS. volume (without date) now preserved in the British Museum,[19] which was evidently written at a time when hardly any but women were employed in the “mysteries of the profession,” and when it was a comparatively rare thing, that needed to be specially advised in certain cases, for them to “make use of (i.e., call in) a physitien.” The writer remarks that “it is meet that the midwife be a woman well read and well experienced,” and gives a caution that “drunkenness is a sordid sin in any who use it, but is a blemish worthy greater blame in ministers, magistrates, midwives, physitiens, and chirurgeons.”
Mrs Celleor, in her letter previously referred to,[20] tells us that in 1642, “the physitiens and chirurgeons contending about it, midwifery was adjudged a chirurgical operation, and midwives were licensed at Chirurgeon’s Hall, but not till they had passed three examinations before six skilful midwives, and as many chirurgeons;” but for some reason (connected probably with their occasional baptismal functions) the midwives were, in 1662, referred for their licence to Doctors’ Commons, thus losing their official connexion with the medical world.
How it came that English midwives fell gradually from their high estate is partly explained by a very public-spirited book (with the appropriate motto “Non sibi sed aliis”) written by a surgeon in 1736.[21] The writer adverts to the accusations of ignorance then brought against the midwives, and remarks that “the only method by which this fatal distemper can be cured, is to put it in the power of midwomen to qualify themselves thoroughly and at a moderate expense.... To which method of qualifying themselves I doubt not the midwomen will object, and say that they would readily be at any reasonable expense and fatigue to be so thoroughly instructed, but it is not in their power. The midwomen cannot, and the midmen will not instruct them. The midmen will object and say that the midwomen want both capacity and strength (instruct them as ye please). To which I reply (ore rotundo, plenis buccis) that it is not want of capacity, docility, strength, or activity ... which is evident to a demonstration from the successful practice of women in the Hôtel Dieu at Paris (the best school for midwifery now in Europe).... Would not any person then be deservedly laughed at who should assert that our women are not as capable of performing their office had they the same instruction as the French women?” This chivalrous surgeon then proposes that regular provision should be made for proper instruction, and for examinations by two surgeons (who have lectured to the women), “and six or seven other persons appointed by His Majesty, because I don’t think it reasonable that so many people’s bread should depend on the humour or caprice of two men only;” adding that “If some such scheme was put in execution, I’m satisfied that in a very few years there would not be an ignorant midwife in England, and consequently the great agonies most women suffer at the very sight of a man would be almost entirely prevented,” and great expense and much life saved.
However, we must suppose that these noble words of protest fell upon deaf ears, and the midwives, being left in their ignorance, their practice gradually passed into the hands of the medical men, who had every advantage of learning at their command.[22]
It is, however, only very recently that men-midwives have been allowed to attend on royal patients in this country; indeed, I believe that the Princess Charlotte was the first to establish the precedent, and that our present Sovereign was the first queen who followed it. In a very interesting series of papers, by Dr Aveling, recently published in the Lancet,[23] accounts have been given of a number of the royal midwives whose names have been honourably preserved in history, such as Alice Dennis, who attended Anne of Denmark, and received a fee of £100 “for her pains and attendance upon the Queen, as of His Highness’s free gift and reward, without account, imprest, or other charge to be set on her for the same.”