Remember in all cases of difficulty and danger to be mindful of the emplastrum adhæsivum of connexion, by which every branch of the faculty should be united for the preservation of the whole; advise (without the least reference to the enormity of expence) a consultation of the most eminent; this renders the case of your patient more serious and alarming, and you oblige your brethren by the recommendation; first of a physician, whose prescription introduces the apothecary; and you then proceed physically and systematically in the joint depredation and cure; your two friends, by the law of retribution, gratefully recommending your inspection of every simple laceration upon all similar occasions.
These are maxims that may at first sight seem beneath the attention of a young and brilliant practitioner, who erroneously conceiving merit a sufficient recommendation, requires no other conductor; but they are so evidently an absolute part of his necessary study, that unless such mutual arts are occasionally put in practice, he can never (in the present multiplied state of practitioners) expect to derive the common necessaries of life from a fair and generous practice of his profession.
Men of understanding, experience, and observation, know, that the benignant hand of providence continues to anticipate in a variety of instances the interpositions of art; and nature would, upon many occasions, entirely effect her own work, if not so frequently interrupted and retarded by the officious hands and interested experiments of professional jugglers.
[TO THE ACCOUCHER,]
OR,
MAN-MIDWIFE.
You fortunately make your appearance upon the boards of public patronage, under the most striking advantages; the prevalence of fashion has exceeded every consideration of decency and discretion, and you are become (by the influence of pride and imitation) as necessary to the comfort of a cottage, as the happiness of a court. From the nature of your professional destination, a pleasing exterior, and an accomplished person, are invariably expected; necessarily blending (from your intended intercourse with the purer part of the creation) the precision of taste, with the perfection of the scholar.
The certificate granted you by that elaborate lecturer, the obstetric professor, proclaims you qualified in the very minutiæ of this mysterious art. The parts, externally and internally, necessary to generation, are so perfectly familiar to your “mind’s eye,” that you can extemporaneously delineate the ovariæ, the “fallopian tubes,” the fimbriæ, and the very act of conception, from the “animalculæ” in “semen masculino,” to the last stage of gestation; the gradual expansion of the uterus, the dilatation of the os uteri, the progress of labour, and all the methods of extraction.
You can clearly define the classes as natural, laborious, and preternatural; the use of the forceps, scissars, crotchet, and blunt hook; the introduction of the catheter, the extraction of the placenta, and the separation of the funis; in fact, all the et ceteras are so perfectly clear to you in theory, that it is almost treason to suppose you can err in the practice.
But, Sir, ripe as you are in these advantages, the harvest of universal applause, and the sweets of emolument, are scarcely to be acquired even by time, labour, and the most indefatigable industry. You have in the practice of midwifery, all the ills of Pandora’s box to encounter, and after twenty years practice may be left to exclaim most emphatically,
“Vain his attempt who strives to please you all.”