Objectionthe Thirteenth.
Saywhat you will, the fashion will predominate. It is now the fashion to prefer men-practitioners of midwifery to midwives. You will oppose the torrent in vain.
Theconclusion against me that I shall oppose the torrent in vain, is a very just one. As to myself, I ought to expect that I should oppose it in vain, if the decision of the public was to turn upon any thing of so little authority as my private opinion, especially in a point where it is so justly liable to the suspicion of its being byassed, both by private interest, and partiality to my own sex. I readily then grant that my own opinion should go for nothing. But what ought to go for a great deal is my reader’s own judgment, formed upon his own reason and knowledge. But that is not all. I have some dependence on Nature and common sense recovering their rights, from this preference of the men-midwiveswhich shocks both, being, in truth, nothing more than a fashion, not even of the growth of this country, but transplanted from a neighbouring one, whose follies are unhappily so contagious, though for the most part so despicable. How a few interested men, for want of business in their own professions, transplanted this baneful exotic here, where it has met with such undue cherishment has already been touched upon.
Butthen as this unnatural preference has all the folly and whim of fashion in it, it may be hoped, that it will also have all the instability and transitoriness of one. Time that confirms the dictates of Nature destroys the fictions of opinion. But in points where Nature is herself attacked or injured, inconveniencies and damages never fail of following thereon, enough to oppose the duration of them. The numbers of lying-in women (thanks to beneficent Nature) rather not destroyed than duly assisted by the men-operators, can neither atone for those who perish, sometimes the mother, sometimes the child, sometimes both,while none of them are but sufferers in some degree; nor long blind a public, that has so much interest not to be imposed upon in a matter so essential to it, by false pretences, or by an injurious and interested degradation of the midwives, who at the worst can hardly be so bad as the very best of the men, in the capital point of their business, the manual function. The oftenest greaterdanger, and always the greaterpain, under men-operators than under the midwives hands will, sooner or later, determine the parties concerned to open their eyes on their greatest interest, in a point of such infinite importance to them.
Grantingthen to Fashion all the power it really has, and a greater one it is, than for the honor of human kind, can well be imagined, still, it not only has its limits of extension, but duration. It is only for the truth of Nature to be universal and eternal.
Fashion, it is true, may not only govern people in indifferent matters, such as dress, furniture, equipage, or so forth, buteven in essential, even in capital ones, such, for example, as is this point of option between the men-operators and the midwives: it may, in short, exert its tyranny in many things, one would rather think left better to the determination ofReason. But then this tyranny cannot well be long-lived. The evils which such a fashion begets destroy at length their own parent. No opinion then, as I have before observed, can be permanent that is not founded on the truth of Nature: but where the consequences of such an opinion are detrimental to the good of society, which is the darling object of Nature; that spirit of self-preservation which she has so manifestly diffused thro’ human kind, will hardly suffer errors pernicious to it long to subsist. There is no fashion can, under such objections, long hold out against victorious Nature, who is sure to revenge the violences offered her.
Andhere I even officiously seize on an occasion that rises to me out of the very bowels, I may say, of my subject, of selecting for one proof of the danger of adopting innovations offensive to Nature, apoint of such near analogy to midwifery, as that of nursing children, the care of whom, next to that of the mothers, is the true midwife’s tender province.
I wish then that those, who too readily admit that this so recent a fashion of employing men-midwives preferable to female ones, is an improvement receivable on the foot of its supposed advantage to human kind, would consider a little the actual consequences of having flown in the face of Nature with respect to the bringing up young children, in a way scarce more foreign from her dictates, than that ofmendeliveringwomen. That women are by Nature herself formed for the office of aiding women in their lying-in; that they are also formed to bring up children by the breast, are two parts of their destination by Nature, which in all ages, and in all countries seem to have born little or no controversy. Interest has lately invaded both these provinces. With this difference, that as to the first, that of women supplanted in their business of delivering women, an active interest has prevailed;as in that of denying the female breast to children, it is a purely passive one[19]; and we shall soon see what a dreadful effect this sacrifice of Nature to interest has produced.
Asto the mischief produced by the other, of the implicitly excluding the women from midwifery, by the power of prejudice and fashion, it is not, as yet, of a Nature for obvious reasons quite so susceptible of proof, though most certainly not the less therefore existent. And that mischief is palpably owing to the gain which the men-midwives find or presume in the exercise of that profession. This is the active interest: that end to which themeans give so justly the construction of base and sordid. The rich are the object of this wretched imposition, which will probably last so much the longer, for the interest to be found in imposing upon them.
Butfor the denying the female breast to children; it has not indeed passed hitherto into a tenet, that children may as well be reared by the spoon as by the breast, because there is not that prospect of the place of adry-nursebeing as lucrative as that of aman-midwife. If it was so, I should not dispair of seeing a great he-fellow florishing a pap-spoon as well as a forceps, or of the public being enlightened by learned tracts and disputations, stuffed full of Greek and Latin technical terms, to prove, that water-gruel or scotch-porridge was a much more healthy aliment for new-born infants than the milk of the female breast, and that is was safer for a man to dandle a baby than for an insignificant woman.
Asthis unnatural treatment then of children is almost entirely as yet confinedto the very poor, that is to say, to new-born babes thrown upon the publicCHARITYfor theirSUSTENANCE, the rearing by the spoon is not yet regularly established as a generaldoctrine, it is only admitted inPractice!Asproperwet-nurses, from the difficulty in procuring them, might bedearerthan dry ones; thecheapestmethod is preferred, and forms a kind of passive interest or saving œconomy.
Butwhat are the consequences of this violation of Nature, in the grudging her peculiarly appointed aliment to these poor little candidates for life? What follows the substituting, for cheapness-sake, such food as is meant to be afforded them, and is perhaps sometimes even not given them? Death. Death with all that cruelty of torture that attends atrophy or inanition. Thus perish these miserable victims to the false opinion, that the course of Nature can be changed with impunity. I have said here false opinion only, because, with all the obduracy of heart that the spirit of interest so notoriously creates, with all the crimes it so often produces, I cannot think, that such an horror, as the murderof so many innocents, can be entirely imputed to interest without ignorance coming in for its share, though interest has doubtless contributed to the so long continuance of it.
Ifthat maxim is not a false one, that he who knowingly suffers an innocent person to perish, and can help it, is actually guilty of murder: and I prefer here the term of guilty to that of accessary; because I am told, that where there is guilt of murder, all are in the eye of equity and law, principals. Ignorance then, of the sure murder of these innocents by their method of treatment, can be the only plea for those to whom the national charity had committed the care of them. I should think too, that even I myself sinned against charity, if I did not believe, that there is none of those trustees of the poor children, that would not shudder at the thought, of himself taking an infant up by the leg and dashing its brains out against the wall. And yet that would be balmy mercy, the dispatch considered, compared to the lingering tortures, inwhich those poor little creatures must expire, in the common way of parish-nursing. What is certain however is, that Death would scarce more assuredly be the consequence of the child’s brains being at once beat out, than of that impropriety of aliment, which in the mildest construction is owing to an error in opinion or belief, that any aliment could be salutarily substituted to the one dictated by Nature.
I havehere mentioned barely impropriety, or sometimes negation of aliment, without allowance for other causes of destruction to those infants, such as cold, bad air, uncleanliness, neglect of due attendence, or deficiency, in short, of requisites, which are not to be expected from the very poorer sort of the people, to whom the rearing of those infants is generally committed. But that omission of mine is neither undesigned nor unfair. I presume I shall have the greatest physicians on my side, in averring, that even new-born babes are endowed with a surprizing hardiness. Their little seemingly so delicate bodies bear cold to a degree scarcely credible, butfrom the commonness of both observation and practice, that they only thrive the better for immersions in cold water. Cleanliness, a good air, and attendence, have doubtless indeed some share in the well-doing of children of that age: but all together are in no degree of comparison to the importance of bestowing on children their appropriate aliment. The physical disquisitions into the reason of this do not belong to me here: nor are a few instances of infants reared by the spoon any valid justification for breaking the general rule of Nature, assigning to the female breast the nutrition of children: of which too there is this salutary consequence, that in the very act of lactation there is, by Nature, generated such an indearment of the suckled child to the nurse[20], as that she who began it perhaps only for hire, finds herselfengaged by a growing affection to supply in some measure the place of the mother to the orphan or deserted babe. The rearing by the spoon is so far from inspiring any such dearness, that the innocent infant is considered only as an embarrassment, of which the quicker the riddance, in the death of thebrat, so much the better.
Theopinion, however, that this one of the greatest institutes of Nature for the preservation of the species, for which she has so admirably organized the female breast, could be dispensed with in favor of a most sordid savingness, has alone caused more human sacrifices, to that black Demon ofInterest, than probably were ever made to the “grim idol of” Moloch in the valley of Hinnom, while the cries of the poor children could not be heard by ears closely stopped up in honor of that infernal spirit.
Butif any reader should imagine that I here invent any thing, or that, in favor of my inference of danger from the caseof revolting against the unalterable institutes of Nature, I have exagerated matters, nothing will be more easy, nor probably at the same more shocking, than the procuring himself a proof of the scarce not actual murders I have mentioned.
Theparish-registers of this great metropolis are, I presume, open for inspection. There needs but to examine them, to discover the red-letter catalogue of the armies of innocents that have been put to death under the management of the charity destined to preserve their life. There will be found not one but many, even of the most populous parishes, where for fourteen, twenty, or more years, not one poor babe of the thousands taken in have escaped the general destruction, and sacrifice to that inhuman fiend of Hell,Interest. Here with what propriety might Nature borrow from one of her most dutiful children and darling, the following exclamation,
—— ——ALLmy pretty ones?Did you sayALL!whatALL?I cannot but remember such things were,That were mostPRECIOUSto me: did Heav’n look on,And would not take their part?Accursed Interest,They were allSTRUCKfor thee!
—— ——ALLmy pretty ones?Did you sayALL!whatALL?I cannot but remember such things were,That were mostPRECIOUSto me: did Heav’n look on,And would not take their part?Accursed Interest,They were allSTRUCKfor thee!
—— ——ALLmy pretty ones?Did you sayALL!whatALL?
—— ——ALLmy pretty ones?
Did you sayALL!whatALL?
I cannot but remember such things were,That were mostPRECIOUSto me: did Heav’n look on,And would not take their part?Accursed Interest,They were allSTRUCKfor thee!
I cannot but remember such things were,
That were mostPRECIOUSto me: did Heav’n look on,
And would not take their part?Accursed Interest,
They were allSTRUCKfor thee!
This is so rigidly true of some parishes, that if I am not misinformed, the verification was not long ago made, as to one of them before a court of justice, of not a single infant having been brought up in the term of fourteen years. And I could name another, in which, during the course of above twenty years,ALL,ALLthe new-born children that fell under the administration of the Parish-Charity, perished, except one boy, of whom it is recorded as a prodigy, that he lived till he was five years of age, when he filled up the number, and died like the rest. Will any one here say, that thisTOTALmortality was purely accidental?
Butthis can be no wonder to those who know there is such an expression,even proverbially in use, as that of children being aBURTHENto the parish. An expression of which it is hard to pronounce whether it is more execrable or more silly. But what is so inconsequential as the spirit, or rather the no-spirit of interest? Children may indeed be a burthen to private families; and yet for the sweetness of it, how chearfully is it oftenest born, or with very few extraordinary exceptions to the general rule? But to a nation, or what is the same thing, to the lawful representative of the nation, a parish, what can be on earth a falser light to view children in, than that of a burthen? What could be so intolerable in the sum to be added to that actually paid for their being worse than murdered out of hand, to save their little lives, and bring them up to that age, in which the national wisdom should have established for them, at once, the means of earning their likelihood, and of earning it with such beneficial retribution to their truly mother-country, as should amply reward her for her not having neglected the duties of humanity towards them? All the good, all the sensible part of mankind allow, that the true riches of a state, arein the numerousness of it subjects. Trade, arts, the navy, the militia, our colonies all open inexhaustible channels of employment and maintenance. And yet there are who can call children, those children too of the public, not in a ludicrous, but in the dearest tenderest sense, since in the public they ought to find that office of a parent, of which the guilt, the inability, the want of nature in their natural relations, or their death may have defrauded them; there are, I say, who can call such children aburthen! We complain of the defect of population, and yet have seen interest creative of obduracy, and perpetuating ignorance and error, manifestly thinning the species, by nipping those tender blossoms of human kind.
Here, if this notice of the treatment of children should even appear a digression, I should, in favor of the intention, hope forgiveness from a humane reader. He would scarce impute it to me as matter for criticism, the having sacrificed propriety to the introduction of a point so important to humanity. But the truth is, that neither as a digression, nor as a false orover-strained argument, nor as a misapplication, can the same well be considered, by any who will withal consider its strict affinity in so many points to the subject of which I am treating.
Itwill readily appear, that both these violences offered to Nature in the substituting the men-midwives to the females, and dry-nurses to wet-ones, acknowledge exactly the same common parent, interest, and have exactly the same common effect, the destruction of infants. Is it then possible to be too much on one’s guard against those so flagrant impositions, which are the offspring of that proof-hardened passion? Is any thing sacred from it, since the lives of innocents palpably have not been so, in one branch of practice, nor very presumably are one jot more respected in the other? It is true indeed, that the practice of employing dry-nurses has not yet ascended much among the great and rich; first, because fashions rarely do ascend from the lower classes of life, and next, because there is no such temptation of actual lucre to defend or spread it: but as to that of preferring men-midwives,nothing is so likely as its descending, as it is so much the nature of fashion to descend, and none are more readily adopted by the lower ranks of people from the higher ones, than those fashions which are the most foolish and the most pernicious. And certainly this is not the one that the least deserves those epithets.
Wasit not for this influence of the fashion, in making the most unreasonable as well as the most dangerous things pass into practice from the highest down to the lowest life, many an honest man might escape the bad consequences of his following the example of those, than whom none are so liable to be imposed on in such matters, the great and the opulent. These make it worth the while of interested persons to deceive them, and thus often for being cheated, pay with their money, their health, and even with their lives. In the mean time, many who are seduced by the vogue in which they see the men-midwives, employ them on a principle which cannot be enough commended, their natural affection to their wives andchildren. The reasoning which occurs to a husband in middling or low life on this occasion is probably as follows. “My wife and child are full as dear to me as those of the greatest man in the kingdom are to him, and shall I grudge a little more expence in the provision for their greatersafety?” So far he reasons right: all his mistake lies in taking too readily for granted, that samegreater safety, to be on the side of the men-practitioners in preference to the midwives, because the former are employed by the great, who, by the by, consult Nature the least of any class of life, even in points of their own health. And certainly in many respects to thatsine-quo-nonof human happiness, the great had better follow the example even of the poor, than the poor theirs. Make the most then of your reasoning from the prevalence of fashion, the gout and the men-midwives, well considered, are no very enviable appendixes of high-life.
Ifin some that laudable tenderness for mother and child, is the determining considerationfor employing a man-midwife by whom Nature, if consulted, would assure all concerned, that the safety of both was more likely to be endangered than not, there are others again, in whom calling in the aid of a man-midwife is rather matter of luxury, of parade or ostentation, than of opinion of superior safety. These are of that imitative kind of beings, with whom the preference of a man-practitioner for the conducting of his wife’s lying-in, turns upon no other motive, than what would equally make them bestow a silk gown of a new fashion, or a laced-head upon her; from a spirit of emulation of some neighbour or superior.
Butwhat is more surprizing yet, is that notwithstanding the kind of loathing and repugnance with which Nature inspires the women to receive such an office from a man, as that of delivering them, a repugnance to which they had so much better listen, since it has all the characters of a salutary instinct; there are women so weak, as not only not to represent to their husbands the expedience of examining, at least, the propriety of such a fashion, beforethey blindly adopt it on the faith either of others liable to be deceived, or of those interested in the deceiving them; but who even, in a ridiculous complaisance to that fashion, of which themselves and children are not unlikely to be the victims, will make a point of being attended by a man-midwife, by way of a piece of state.
I havemyself known women so infected by this silly vanity, that on receiving visits from their friends after lying-in, and being delivered by a woman, with the utmost safety and satisfaction to them, have been ashamed of having had the better sense and regard for themselves, to employ a midwife in defiance of the fashion, and have told their friends, that it is true Mrs. —— had lain them, but that there was a Doctor at hand in the next room. This by the by was false, for such aLed-Doctoris neither needed nor employed, where a midwife that knows her business is called. If any occasion for medical or even chirurgical skill arises from the complication of a case, there is always time to have the advice of a regular physician,or a regular surgeon, because that complication can never escape timely notice. It can only then be, for the sake of his iron and steel instruments, that a man-midwife has so much as the pretext of being necessary, and I hope to prove, that all the needful can be much better done without them. Yes, I repeat it, better done without them.
Forhere and throughout the reader will please to observe, that it is on the superiority of safety in employing midwives that I impugn the growing fashion of a recourse to men-practitioners. It is the side of Nature I take against a set of mean mercenaries, who commit the cruellest outrages upon her, under the falsest of all pretences in them, that of assisting her. I would not be so criminal as to wish the benefit of a false argument, in a point of life and death to those mothers and children, my tender care, even could I be silly enough to imagine, that I could pass such an one upon my reader. I wave therefore all plea of the novelty of this upstart profession of men-midwives. Such a pleaI readily confess is not receivable. Were It so, how many valuable discoveries or improvements must have been stifled in their birth, if the objection to their being novelties was a valid one? All that I would contend for is, that an innovation should not be admitted only because it is an innovation; and that the decision of a matter of such capital importance, is better left to Reason, always herself submissive to Nature, than abandoned to Fashion, which so often acknowledges no other jurisdiction than that of whim or humor.
Thereis no prescription for error, no sanction in custom against improvements. But certainly in such a capital point as the life of so many human creatures, in short, in one of the most sacred objects of government, that of population, such a novelty as that of bringing men-midwives into general practice, requires rather a greater authority than that of Fashion, while there is such a standard of essay as Reason.
Inoculationwas not long since a novelty in this nation. The lady who introduced it, for any thing I know to the contrary, still lives to enjoy the honor of having procured so great a benefit to mankind. But then this benefit would bear the fairest of all trials, that of calculation: for what is reason itself but another word for calculation? The procuring then the small-pox by inoculation, in a body duly prepared, and especially at an eligible age, affords, according to the doctrine of chances, so much a fairer prospect of safety, than in the case of a spontaneous or accidental infection, that nothing scarcely could be imagined more friendly to Nature than such a rational prevention of her danger, from a distemper too rarely escaped, for the possibility of that escape to be employed as an argument against such a method of prevention. Here then the seeming violence offered to Nature, appeals for its justification to Nature, Reason and Experience.
ConsultNature as to this innovation in the employing men-practitioners preferablyto the midwives, who have been for ages, and so universally considered as the properest for that function. Nature will tell you, that it is injuring her to suspect her of being so cruel a mother-in-law, as to deny her tenderest production the female sex sufficient succors within herself, or leave women under a necessity of recurring to men for aid in their greatest need of it, during those sufferings, to which it has pleased the great master of Nature to subject peculiarly the women. If Nature then is but another name for his Fiat through all his works, never was his will more plainly signified than by her voice in this point: a repugnance in both sexes to that office being administered by a man. A repugnance which is not even one of Nature’s least remarkable signs of abhorrencefrom this innovation, and is only to be surmounted in the men by interest, and in the women by their false fear, or what is weaker yet, by their rage in following that bell-weather Fashion, though it should lead them like sheep to the slaughter. The uncouthness and inaptitude of the men, so ill compensated by their miserable inventions of iron and steel instruments, formanother loud protest of Nature against this important function being committed to men-operators.
Consultreason, and reason founded upon those dictates of Nature, to which time only gives the more strength, will tell you, in contempt of fashion, that the men-midwives will never do any thing in a matter rather too universal for any excellence in it to depend upon Greek, Latin, or Arabic; that they are, in short, only hatching of wind-eggs, in the study of an art, which no incubation on it will ever sufficiently naturalize to them.
Ifto experience you appeal, I have already furnished unrefutable arguments of that’s being against the men-midwives. But let them remember my confession, that the number which I have quoted of women happily delivered is taken from the course of practice of good midwives. I am not here an advocate for bad ones, nor would I wish to authorize them if I could. All that I shall say, and dare aver is, that the very worst of them, unless their hands are cut off, or at least deserve to be cutoff, can hardly be worse than the best of the men-operators.
Butwhile it is to the tribunal of Nature, of Reason, and of Experience, that I presume to wish that this same Fashion might be brought; I readily acknowledge its force though not its justice. I feel the power of it, with pain, for the sake of humanity[21]! My opposition then to this fashion is rather founded in duty than in hope. The weakness of it will probably furnishfashion only a new matter of triumph, not indeed over me who am too low for it, but over the welfare of mankind, which it has often, in more points than this, the pleasure to see sacrificed to it, though in not one perhaps more palpably than in this one.
Inthe mean time it might be worth the while of even those who not being themselves men-midwives, nor having any personal interest in patronizing them, owe their favorable notion of them to their own fair judgment; it would, I say, even be worth their while to consider that there may possibly be a time, when they may themselves see reason to change that judgment of theirs. They may possibly discover the illusions of interest, under the old stale mask of service to the public. They may find out the folly of fashion. But will not it be too late, when that fury of fashion shall, like a pestilence, have either swept away the good midwives, or at least have so thinned their numbers, as not to leave enough for the demand of the service? They must in time become, to all intents and purposes, like an old obsolete law, aseffectually abolished by disuse, as if abrogated by a formal repeal. “The matter would not be much if they were,” an instrumentarian will probably say, but I doubt much, whatever he might gain by it, whether mankind or population would profit much by that extermination, even though the men-midwives with their tire-têtes, crotchets, and forceps, were to succeed to their business.
Andthat such an extermination is far from improbable, will appear no strained inference to those who consider the power of Fashion, which establishes its tyranny, much as the first Roman emperors did theirs over that commonwealth, by leaving a semblance of liberty without the substance; whence the baneful effects do not the less follow, or rather the more surely follow. Thus there is indeed as yet no act of parliament for the preference of men-practitioners or the extinction of the midwives, but the statutes of fashion are not only more forcible than any act of a human legislature, but, in this matter even than the laws of Nature herself tho’ inculcating their observance, under pain of death,or at the least of severe corporal punishment; such as being torn with cold pinchers, or cut or punctured with instruments, or put to more pain than necessary.
Alreadyhas fashion driven numbers of women out of their livelihood to make way for the encroachments of the men on the female provinces of industry, though there never was a time, in which it was not a just complaint that there were rather much too few means of employment for women. Fashion has determined it otherwise, and many callings formerly appropriated to females are now exercised by men.
Butas to this profession of midwifery, even the total extinction of the real midwives, would not be perhaps so bad as giving that name to those poor creatures in training under the men-practitioners, who independently of their own incapacity of practice, consequently of forming good practitioners, have a palpable interest not to suffer their women-pupils to gain any eminence in the profession that might giveumbrage to themselves[22]. The midwives whom these men-practitioners would perhaps gratiously allow to subsist, might to their own insufficiency add the dangerous circumstance of creating, or at least ofnot preventing, by duly exerting themselves in the predisposing part, the necessity of calling in their protectors, especially where recommended by them. Not that I imagine even these mock-midwives would wilfully be guilty of such prevarication in their duty. For them not to deserve such a suspicion, it is enough that they are women, consequently tender-hearted. But that does not exclude the idea of weakness. But where so fair a virtue as gratitude may disguise even from themselves the fouler motive of interest lurking at bottom, if that tenderness is not even destroyed, it may not impossibly be made a tool of, and join in persuading them, that things had really better be left to the men-practitioners, whose creatures and devotees they are. Thence a negligence superadded to their defect of skill. Such subalterns then would, at least, not be dis-inclined to the “FINDING”themselves“AT A LOSS”, or yet worse for the patient, have by their omissions, if not commissions, bred the occasion of “finding” themselves “at that loss”, even mechanically, and without the direct design of paying their court to their recommending “accoucheur,their man of honorandreal friend,” in acandidrecourse to him. Pity it were indeed that so charming a harmony should not subsist betweenthe accoucheursand suchmidwives, for the “MUTUAL ADVANTAGE” of both! A harmony, which however could hardly be established but at the expence of the sacrificed patients.
Andhere I appeal to the reader’s own fair judgment, whether I over-strain the consequence against such wretched creatures as they cannot but be who must, for bread, be so subservient to the men-midwives, and be what the French call, theirâmesdamnées(souls sold). Can any thing be more probable than that thesegood womendignified by the men-practitioners, out of their special grace and favor with the title of midwives, will on all occasion consult the “advantage” of their kindpatronsand “real friends”. And how can that advantage be better consulted than by bungling their work so as to make itappearnecessary to have acandid recourseto the good Doctor, who recommended and warranted them? can it, in short, be imagined,that they will be less mere machines than Dr. Smellie’s Dolls, or indeed furnish less occasion, than the education under those Dolls, for theironandsteel instruments, which are the most part understood to be indispensably necessary where the midwife shall have failed. And as to such midwives as have been formed or recommended by the men-practitioners, theirnotfailing would indeed be the wonder!
Thusthe name of a midwife may subsist after the reality shall have perished, and the world so often deceived by mere names, may not perhaps discover this annihilation till long after it is effectuated, or till it is too late to repair the damages, which will hardly fail of discovering it to them. Of good midwives there never were too many; but they are now much too few; though still not more rare in proportion than those of the men-midwives, who may be called good, comparatively to so many of them as are dangerously superficial. Discouragement has already greatly hindered the places of the good female-practitioners who are gone off the stage, frombeing duly supplied. Proper subjects decline taking up a profession, in which they must have to dread the prevalence of so false a prejudice against them, as that which determines the preference of the male-operators. It is easier to destroy, than to create a-new; and perhaps when the need of good midwives shall be at the greatest, the difficulty of finding such, will make the employing of men-practitioners, with all the so just objections to them, even a necessity. Things are not at present perhaps far from that point, and an alarming consideration that would be to all women, if they were but to reflect on the increase of pain and danger to themselves in the hours already too big with both, of their increase, I say, by the most aukward and violent aid of the men, compared to the so much more effectual and gentle methods so natural to the women-assistents.
Ifthe parties then principally concerned in the decision of this question, and especially the women who are the patients, and their tender relations of husband, father, or brother, &c. were but to consulttheir own feelings, their reason, and even that instinct which, in this point, is itself so strong a reason from its being the voice of Nature never unhearkened to with impunity, they would soon, to your objection drawn from a fashion scarce less ridiculous than pernicious, allow no more weight than, in fact, it deserves.
Youmust allow, however, that it must be a false modesty that, in the women, which can oppose the preference of the men-practitioners to the female ones.
I knowindeed that Dr. Smellie (page 2. of his introduction) attributes the opposition made by the Athenian women[23]tothe prohibition of midwives, and to the acceptance of men-practitioners in their room to “mistaken modesty.” It may however with more reason and truth be averred, that the admittence of men to that function by women, would be in the womena most egregiouslyMISTAKEN IMMODESTY. Since, surely the virtue or grace of female modesty is not an object to be held so cheap, as to be sacrificed for worse than nothing, for nothing better, in short, than the purchase with it of danger or perdition to both the mother and child. After so valuable a sacrifice as that of modesty itself, it may perhaps sound mean to add any thing comparatively, so trifling as that of the hire not given to the person who prostitutes herself in some sort on a so much mistaken hope, but to the very person to whom she is prostituted in that hope of superior safety.
I amnot then here to assume a character, that would become me so ill, of a Casuist or Divine, by pretending to fix the degree of moral turpitude in the submission of modest women to a practice, which, I will even allow might be justified by the superior consideration of safety to two lives, if that consideration was not a question most impudently begged, with so little foundation, that the very contrary thereof is the truth.
Neitherwould I here incur the just charge of impertinence, in giving my private and insignificant opinion on an undecency so unwarranted by any necessity. That would look too like dictating to others, what they are to think of a practice, of which every one will doubtless judge for himself. The boundaries of female modesty are so well known, and so ascertained by common consent, that surely it little belongs to me to offer new lights upon that subject.
WhatI have then to say, on this head, is purely in justification of that modesty, which the men-midwives are for obvious reasons pleased to call a false one, though so far as it pleads for excluding them, it is an ingratitude to that Nature, of which it is the peculiar gift to the female sex, not to term it even a wise virtue.
Societyespecially stands indebted to Nature for her suggestion of modesty in this point. If in all ages, in all civilizedcountries, the wife is considered as the peculiar property of a husband, insomuch, that all laws human and divine consecrate, if I may use the expression, to him alone, exclusive of all other men, the access to the reserved parts of the wife’s body, certainly such a privilege can hardly be thought lightly communicable. And what can be more so than suffering a man, mercenarily or wantonly, or perhaps both, to invade that so sacred property, under the mask of a service, for which he is by Nature so evidently disqualified? While Nature too has made so ample a provision for this very service, in fitting the women for it, with so much more propriety and safety, both to the concern of the public in the welfare of population, as well as to the domestic honor of families, which is not without some danger, at least, from the practice of midwifery being in the hands of men.
Asto this last averment of mine, the truth of it is so glaring, that it does not even need Dr. Smellie’s own implicit confession of it, in his instructions to the men-practitioners in general, or, if you please, to his more than nine hundred pupils.
“He(theAccoucheur)ought toACTandSPEAKwith the utmostDELICACYofDECORUM,andNEVER VIOLATEtheTRUSTreposed in him, so as to harbour the leastIMMORALorINDECENTdesign; but demean himself in all respects suitable to theDIGNITYof hisPROFESSION,” p. 447.
HereI confess myself so smitten with the propriety and sanctity of the precept of the good Doctor’s, and particularly with the needfulness of it, that I would advise every man-practitioner of midwifery, of a certain age that might require it, to have the said commandment wrote out ingold letters, and wear it about his arm, especially on his proceeding toofficiate, by way of amulet, phylactery or preservative against any incident temptation toviolatehistrust, or to fall off from the highdignityof his profession. All that I fear is, that its virtue may not always be to be depended upon, against the energy planted by nature in the difference of the sexes. No one would be farther than I from thecruel injustice of drawing consequences unfavorable to any set of men, from the misconduct of any particular individual in it.[24]Errors are purely personal. If I then so much as mention the case of a man-midwife convicted of having debauched a gentleman’s wife, in consequence of his admission to the practice of his profession of midwifery upon her, it is by no means neither with a design to insult the unhappy criminals, nor to draw from thence an inference to the disfavor of the men-practitioners in this point, beyond what I am authorized by the constancy of the temptation from Nature, to all, yes, to all, who, by their age, in one sex, are not past it: I say in one sex, because in the other, the female, the very circumstancesof a woman’s needing a midwife, shews that she is not past the age of, at least, causing a temptation. Further, it would even be a matter of argument on the side of the men-midwives, that sofewinstances come to the knowledge of the public, of the ill-consequence of a practice which breaks down the capital barriers of modesty; if those ill-consequences were not, in the nature of them, not only a secret, but easy to be kept secret. Who would complain but the husband or relations of transactions between a man-midwife and his patient? But then how seldom need a third to be let into such a secret?
I wouldnot then have the men-midwives to be too forward to treat the modesty of the women on this head as a false one, or their scruples as a weakness. Modesty in this case is not only the safeguard of the lives of themselves and children, but of their own honor, which if it does not receive an actual fall in such a subjection to a man-midwife, had perhaps better not be so unnecessarily risked so near the brink of the precipice.
I amnot writing here for Italians or Spaniards, or any of the inhabitants of those countries who are so prone to jealousy, perhaps because they know their women. I am now addressing myself to Englishmen, not jealous, because, if they know theirs, they must know that, in proportion to the number, no women on the earth have more of the reality of virtue and modesty. I will not suppose then any thing so offensive, as that the chastity of the generality of them is not infinitely superior to the advantages or overtures for design afforded the men admitted to such a privacy, as that of attending them in their lying-in and delivering them. But would the honestest woman, or one however sure of herself or of her virtue, think it eligible, without a full satisfactory proof of that superior safety, which is her object in preferring men-midwives, to be herself the occasion of temptation to those people? How can she answer that she will not be it? In that so formidable army of mercenaries, actually continuing to form itself under the banners of Fashion, and headed by Interest, can sheanswer that the insensible stoics of it, will fall to her share? Would a woman, I will not say, of strict principles of honor, but barely of not the most abandoned ones, submit herself in the manner she must to a man-midwife, on her employing him, if she would but satisfy herself, as she easily may, that his aid cannot be more effectual than that of a woman? But what! if it is most undoubtedly a less safe one?
Butthis is far from all to be objected on the head of modesty to this practice. The opportunities, if not of temptation, if not of seduction by it, at least of offensiveness to female reserve are such, as would make even a husband, the least susceptible of jealousy, so uneasy for the outrages to which the employing of a man-midwife in the course of his wife’s pregnancy and delivery might expose her, as would make him think it no indifferent point for his judgment to settle whether such outrages might not better be spared her. It will not I presume be denied, that all female modesty is a flower, the delicacy of which cannot be too much guarded against any tendency toblast it, and that nothing can threaten more that effect, than such infringements of the unity of a husband’s privilege in the sole incommunicable possession of his wife’s body, as are implied in the course of a man-midwife’s attendance. An unity of privilege, which, when broke in one point, does not always stop at that, but may proceed to farther breach, where there is art on one side, and weakness on the other. Many women are doubtless proof against the slipperiness of such an overture: but all have not alike strength of mind.
Butlest I should be here taxed with forging of phantoms merely for the honor of combating them, I shall only entreat all parties concerned to consider the following so probable circumstance, and then let them decide as their own judgment will direct them: a circumstance taken (can any thing be fairer?) even from a man-midwife’s own stating, as well as from the nature of things, of which none need be ignorant that will think at all about them.
Itis then to be observed, that during a woman’s pregnancy, and before the labor-painscome on, one of the principal points of midwifery is, what is called the art ofTouching. Thence are derived the surest prognostics for preparation, and especially from the signs it affords of rectitude or obliquity of the Uterus. I have already offered reasons needless to repeat, why the men can never arrive at the excellence of skill in the women in this particular. But as to the importance of this faculty ofTouching, hear what Dr. Smellie himself says.
P. 180. “The design oftouchingis to be informed, whether the woman is or is not with child; to know how far she is advanced in her pregnancy; if she is in danger of a miscarriage; if theos uteribe dilated; and in time of labor to form a right judgment of the case, from the opening of theos internum, and the pressing down of the membranes with their waters, and lastly, to distinguish what part of the child is presented.”
Again, P. 448. speaking of amidwife, he says, “she ought to be well skilled inthe art oftouchingpregnant women, and know in what manner the womb stretches, together with the situation of all the abdominalVISCERA: she ought to be perfectly mistress of theARTofEXAMINATIONin the time of labour”.
Hereyou have from an unsuspected authority a certainly not over-rated importance of the expedience of preliminaryTOUCHING. Now granting, only for argument’s sake, what is assuredly false, that a man-practitioner can be equal (superior he would not in this point, at least, have the impudence to pretend himself) to a midwife; let a husband, let a wife, but reflect on the difference, every thing else being equal, there must be as tomodesty, between the function oftouchingbeing performed by a man or by a woman. Let a husband, I say, for an instant figure to himself what a figure he must make, what a figure his wife must make, under such a ceremony performed by a lustyHE-MIDWIFE, exploring those arcana of the female fabric, and especially to so little purpose, with his natural disqualifications forso much as knowing what he is about. Will the husband be present? What must be the wife’s confusion during so nauseous and so gross a scene? Will hemodestlywithdraw while his wife is soserved? What must be his wife’s danger from one of those rummagers, if she should be handsome enough to deserve his attention, or a compliment from him on such a visitation of her secret charms, the more flattering fromhim, not only as he must be supposed so good a judge from the frequency of his occasions of comparison, but as it must imply a superior corporal merit in the woman so visited, as could overcome that satiety which a fastidious plenty of patients might so naturally be imagined to create in a man-midwife? Will any one say, that these suppositions are over-strained, or out of Nature? I fancy, that if the secret histories of many families were ransacked, of the practice on which the men-midwives were in possession, it would not be always found, that those preliminary visitations were not turned to some account of interest or seduction. And yet an omission of thattouchingmight be dangerous. How kind is it then in Nature,to have of herself so far consulted the good and tranquility of society, in palpably bestowing upon women a faculty, which she has as palpably refused to the men, in whom the exercise of it would for obvious reasons be big with so many inconveniences? Is there any breach of charity in the taking for granted the existence of such inconveniences, unless indeed, all of a sudden, in favor of this lucre-begotten sect, the men were ceased to be men, and the women women?
Butallowing that nothing was to pass between a man-midwife and his patient, in thisactoftouching, beyond the necessity of the practice, or in a merely technical sense, that in short no such libertine impression should make itself be felt in the course of suchtouches, as should discompose the goodDoctor’sDIGNITY, and endanger the patient’s honor, by present or future attempts derived from such a strange privity; is it not to be feared, that a designing or interested person may take other advantages besides that of gratifying sensuality? May not a woman, the more attached she is toher modesty, the greater sacrifice she has made of it, in her innocence of intention, only imagine herself but the more subjected to a man, to whom she has submitted in the manner she must do to a man-midwife, and let him take an ascendant over her and her family, of which a midwife would not so much as dream, from her office being so much in course, and too little extraordinary for her to have any extraordinary pretentions or designs? On the contrary, a man-midwife need scarce set any bounds to his. In any differences in a family, especially between man and wife, must not a man-practitioner, from such a familiarity with the wife’s person, have such a footing in the confidence of the wife, as may enable him to dispose of her will almost in any thing? He may be her apothecary, physician, surgeon, privy-councellor, what not? What can a woman refuse a man, to whom she is so deluded as to think she owes her own life, or that of a darling child, all his merit, in which I have before explained? What can a woman in short refuse a man, to whom nothing of that has been refused, in which consist all the preliminaries of granting every thing? Shemay indeed refuse him the sacrifice of her virtue, if he should think it worth designing upon, but how few things else could she refuse him? Once more the greater value she put on the sacrifice of so much of her modesty, the less would she be able to deny him any thing else, as any thing else must comparatively appear so inconsiderable.
Buthitherto I have spoke only of those outrages and dangers to modesty from the preparatory attendance of the man-midwife as occasion may require, during the pregnancy. But as to his officiating in the crisis of the labor-pains and delivery, there are two very essential points of consideration.
The first.The modesty of the women, unaccustomed to the approaches of other men than a husband, must be in great sufferance in the moments of their labor-pains. All Nature agonizes in them. They are at once weakened in the flesh and in the spirit. The bare presence of a man to officiate at such a time, may excite in thema revolution capable of stopping the labor-pains caused by the expulsive efforts of delivery, which thus becomes dangerously retarded, and may so overpower them, as to put them in the greatest peril of their lives. This is what has often happened. You may see frequent examples of this revolt of Nature against the ministry of men-midwives in Dr. La Motte himself, a man-midwife. If Nature then suffers so much in women at that juncture, when a person, nay even of the same sex, offers her aid, in certain indispensable occasions, to which humanity is subjected; how greatly must the presence of a man increase their constraint and embarrassment, and rob them still more of that so necessary freedom in the animal functions! But how greatly ought the women to thank that their instinctive repugnance of Nature to such a prostitution of their persons, if they consider those tortures, which, by the listening to that same repugnance, may at once be saved to their modesty, and to their personal feeling. Let them paint themselves the following posture prescribed by a man-midwife. “The patient must be commodiouslyplaced, that is to say, on the bed-side, her thighs raised and expanded, her feet drawn up to her posteriors, and kept steady in that posture by some trusty helpers.”[25]Levret, p. 161.On the use of the new crooked forceps.Here it may be said; “why there is nothing in this attitude, however shockingly indecent, but what may be sanctified by the extremities of necessity”. Very well. But what must a husband, what must a wife think at her beingspread outin this manner, under the hands and eyes of a man-practitioner, with his helpers, perhaps his trusty apprentices, only for the experiment of aforcepsof a new invention, the merit of which too is a so contested an one, that Levret himself is forced to own that, “that sameFORCEPSwould be[26]an instrument of pureSPECULATION,and not ofPRACTICE, IF(N. B. thatIF)a certain general precept should be true,” which, by the by, is most certainly so! So that, in this case, for example, you see how a woman may be treated, only to ascertain the merit of some new-fangled gimcrack of an instrument. But to how many occasions of as little, or even less necessity than this, for putting a woman into postures of this sort, might not wantonness, interest, or other motives give birth? Or can pretexts for such insults to modesty be wanting to designingness?
The secondconsideration is this. Those moments of weakness of spirit, and infirmity to which the labor-pains subject the women may, in some of naturally the weakest of them be, liable to leave impressions in favor of a man-midwife, the less suspected of harm, and consequently the more dangerous for their being suggested by that gratitude for his imaginary[27]contributionto their deliverance, which is itself a virtue, though the object of it is so miserably mistaken by them. Let any one image to himself what must often happen in Nature, a woman sinking under her pains, her mind all softened and overpowered with her present feelings, and looking up forreliefto theman, employed, as she imagines, to procure it her, though the real fact oftenestis, that he will not have enough prevented her pain, or perhaps greatly occasioned its increase. Of this however she knowing nothing, sees him in the amiable light of her deliverer from her actual and intolerable state of pain. In the mean time, those aukward uncouth endeavours of his to relieve and deliver her, even though they should aggravate her torture, pass upon her for master-pieces of art or skill. “Who would be without a man-midwife?” At length, Nature sometimes, even in spite of all his omissions, or bungled operation, proceeds in her favorite task of delivery, that is to say, if he has not hurried or made tragic work of it, with his mispractice or his instruments. The patient then is rid of her burthen, and what are then her feelings? Those of exquisite delight, from the comparison with what she was induring but the instant before. It is a transport of joy, not unmingled with gratitude, to the person to whom she fancies herself in any measure obliged for it. The ugliest wretch on earth, so he could but be imagined the cause of such a delivery, would, in those instants, assume in her eyes the form of Loveliness itself. Even with the greatestinnocence of heart she could hug, she could kiss him in the ebullitions of her joy and gratitude. Let no one imagine these expressions are over-strained. Such a rapture of felicity, in the sudden case of being taken as it were down from a rack, is not of a Nature to know any bounds of moderation, nor can be conceived but by those who have felt it. Her gratitude would even extend to inanimatethings, much more to the dear Doctor, to whom she conceives she owes so much. She eyes him with all the intense eagerness of a gratitude so fond, that its transiency into a passion of another nature would not appear such a prodigy, to those who consider how apt passions of tenderness are to confound motives and run into one another. The melting-softness of those moments of infirmity and weakness of spirit, affords a susceptibility of impressions, which may not afterwards be so soon worn out, and of which the usual affection from the difference of sexes, in the parties, may sooner or later come in for its share. Dr. Smellie has, as I have before observed, implicitly allowed the possibility of a temptation to men, and shall I not followhis laudable example of candor, and confess that there may also be weak women?
Itis indeed true that in cases of extremities, such as most certainly are not the frequentest ones, any thought of immodesty may be intirely out of the question. The sad and suffering state of a woman agonizing with pain, at the gates one may say of death, leaves little room for licentious temptations. But, once more, those cases are much the rarest: and even in those, the greater the danger will have been, the greater must the gratitude afterwards be for the imaginary service, that will be supposed to have accomplished the deliverance. Let a midwife have really rendered that service, the gratitude will scarce be so quick, so lively or so lasting, only because she is not a man.
Ifit shall be here objected, that the men-midwives ought to be above all suspicion or scandal of this sort; I shall only say, that at least it is their interest to appear so. But they themselves will not pretend to an exemption from temptation, nor can answerfor themselves that such a temptation may not come into existence, as that all their virtue, fortified by the divine precept before quoted from Dr. Smellie, may not defend them from yielding to it. They are not, or at least ought not to be men in years for obvious reasons as to that manual practice of theirs which at the best is so indifferent. Let any one then consider the consequence of this worse than unnecessarily putting young women, in such manner, into the hands of men in the vigor of their age. Let any impartial person but reflect what barriers are thrown down, what a door is opened to licentiousness, by the admission of this so perfectly needless innovation. Think of an army, if but of barely Dr. Smellie’s nine-hundred pupils, constantly recruiting with the pupils of those pupils, let loose against the female sex, and of what an havock they may make of both its safety and modesty, to say nothing of the detriment to population, in the destruction of infants, and I presume, it will not appear intirely in me a suggestion of private interest to wish things, in this point, restored to the old course of practice of this art of midwifery by women. A course which Naturehas so self-evidently established, in her tender regard to the female sex, and to its darling offspring, and in which she has not less consulted one of her primary ends, the Good of Society, in the greater security of the conjugal union and property, which ought to be so sacred, and especially so, for the honor of the human understanding, from the invasion of an upstart profession, sordidly mean in its motives, infamously false in its pretences, shamefully ridiculous in its practice, and yet dreadfully serious in all its consequences.
In the foregoing part of this work I have contented myself with asserting, in general, the perfect inutility of those instruments, of which the male-practitioners themselves confess the danger, and use them not a bit the less for that confession. It is then for the following and second part, that I have reserved the entering into a more particular discussion of them. Therein will appear, upon how false and slender a foundation the gentlemen-midwiveshave insinuated themselves into a business so little made for them. The truth is, that the pernicious quackery of those same instruments has been artfully made the pretext, and become the sanction of an innovation set on foot by Interest, adopted by Credulity, and at length fostered by Fashion. The employing of midwives was undoubtedly not long since, in this country, the General Rule. The calling in of men-practitioners, upon very extraordinary occasions, was an Exception, and a very rare one, to that General Rule. But by a fatal inversion of the natural order of things, the Exception is recently crept into the place of the General Rule. The point is to consider, whether this palpable violence to Nature is of that benefit to society which it is pretended to be.
I havealready examined some of the arguments in favor of the men-practitioners. But the principal one, deduced from the incapacity, or rather aversion of the midwives, upon just grounds, from usinginstruments, merits an ampler scrutiny. In proof of my candor in it, I shall take most of my remarks on those instruments from what the men-practitioners themselves say, and confess of them. This, I presume, cannot be deemed unfair.
Uponthe whole, those parties whom the decision may concern, will please to decide on which side the force of Reason and Truth shall appear the greatest; and so deciding, it is, in fact, in their own favor, and in one of their most capital concerns, that they will decide.
Theywill decide, in short, whether, upon the whole, the plea of the men-practitioners, founded upon the ignorance of a few midwives which, bad as it is, is more than balanced by their incompetencyin the manual function, and to which a remedy might easily be found, is a valid one for driving out of the practice of midwifery a sex, to which the faculty of it is self-evidently the genuine gift of Nature herself, only to make way for a set of interestedmale-practitioners, whose so boasted art is oftenest signalized by the most barbarous and horrid outrages upon Nature, with this aggravation, that they are needlessly committed under the specious and plausible pretext of flying to her assistence.