Hints to Husbands: A Revelation of the Man-Midwife's Mysteries

CHAPTER V.

Mrs. Jameson, in her admirable essay, “The Communion of Labour,” most truly observes—“That some departments of medicine are peculiarly suited to women, is beginning to strike the public mind.” Again, in her “Sisters of Charity,” she quotes the following words of the late Dr. Gooch:—“Many will think that it is impossible to impart a useful knowledge of medicine to women who are ignorant of anatomy, physiology, and pathology. A profound knowledge, of course, would not, but a very useful degree of it might—a degree which, combined with kindness and assiduity, would be far superior to that which the country poor receive at present. I have known matrons and sisters of hospitals with more practical tact in the detection and treatment of disease than half the young surgeons by whom the country poor are commonly attended.”[55]

“Perhaps,” says the author of “Women and Work,” “there is no profession which so calls for women as that of medicine. Much suffering would be saved to young women if they had doctors of their own sex, who, with friendly counsel and open speaking, would often prevent many forms of severe disease by attending to first symptoms.”

Elizabeth Blackwell,[56] one of those noble women who, braving the servile conventionalisms of the world, with right and reason, morality and religion on their side, have triumphed over prejudice and bigotry, by firmly establishing themselves as female physicians[57]—in “an appeal on behalf of the medical education of women,” after referring to the establishment and opening of medical schools for women in Philadelphia, Boston, and other towns of the United States, in the nine years since “the first woman was admitted as a regular student to a medical college, and graduated with the usual honours,” says:—“In all these places public opinion has expressed itself heartily in favour of the action of the colleges. The majority of the female graduates have entered upon the practice of their profession, and many of them have already formed a large and highly respectable practice. The intense prejudice which at first met the idea of a female doctor, is rapidly melting away. If further evidence were needed of the vitality of the new idea, and its adaptation to a real want in the community, it might be found in the character of the practice which has come to those physicians now most firmly established. Intelligent, thoughtful women, of calm good sense, who appreciate the wide bearing of this reform, and foresee its important practical influence, have been the first to employ the new class of physicians in their families, and encourage them with their cordial approbation.”

Dr. Dickson says, in “The Destructive Art of Healing:”—“One of the greatest obstacles to the progress of medical truth in England, is the employment of surgeon-apothecaries as midwives—almost entirely monopolizing the practice of medicine by the influence which they have gained over the minds of our women; these people will countenance no physician who does not prescribe large quantities of useless, and too frequently deleterious medicine.

“The ladies of this country should take a lesson from the American ladies, who not only prefer midwives of their own sex, but actually employ female physicians. Female modesty and morality alike require that the diseases of women should be attended to solely by women; and all through the United States you now meet with regularly-bred female physicians, most of them having the degree of M.D. from a university, and many of them being in the enjoyment of large and lucrative practice.

“We have the pleasure of an acquaintance with Mrs. Dr. Longshore—she is a lady possessing a strong and original mind, close powers of perception and reasoning, and a thorough medical education. As a practical anatomist she has few superiors, even among practitioners of the ‘sterner mould.’ Mrs. Dr. Longshore is ‘a Friend,’ and her whole character is marked by the excellencies of the ‘Friends,’ or Quakers, as they are called. Placid, thoughtful, observant, full of sympathy, and governed by an active benevolence, she delights in doing good. Her practice is large, rapidly increasing, and generally successful, and she is devoutly attached to her noble profession....

“Medicine and midwifery are both domestic arts; woman is all but born a doctor. Ladies of England, think of this. Hitherto you have left the field of ‘labour’ to men who would be better employed with your distaffs and spindles. Mothers of England, you have a mission—fulfil it; proclaim to your daughters that the birth of a child is not a surgical operation, but a natural process; and that there is no case of parturition so difficult that may not be better managed by a well instructed woman than by a man, whose very presence in the sick chamber disturbs the uterine action, and causes the greater number of difficulties that occur in such cases.”

“In a country like England, to clear away a given folly is too often, unfortunately, only to make room for some other folly equally egregious. This, in our day, has been the case with medicine. Just as a considerable number of physicians had come to adopt my own view of the true constitutional origin of diseases, up sprung a class of people who will have it, that in the majority of female complaints, at least, there must ever be more or less of local wrong, which no possible constitutional treatment can cure! Whispering mysteriously the words ‘engorgement,’ ‘tumour,’ ‘inflammation,’ ‘ulceration of the os,’ ‘version,’ and ‘retroversion’—phrases for the most part invented for the mere purpose of striking panic into the hearts of families who must ever be in the dark here—these men straightway confine the patient to her couch—in which unnatural position they keep her for months, and, if possible, for years together—during which they subject her to the most odious treatment; performing, with speculum, caustic, and other dangerous appliances, the most daring and indecent operations....

“By the people to whose practices I have just alluded a woman is told all possible and impossible things—things the most frightful that imagination can conceive—to cure which, forsooth, she must lie on her back for months. And if this oracular sentence be enforced by two or more of their number, acting in consultation—anglicè in collusion—the weak creature believes accordingly. From that moment she is the dupe and the victim of the most unprincipled scoundrels, many of whom, by mixing up religion with their medical cant, contrive to bring some of the richer class of women to such a state, that they become annuities to those impostors throughout the greater part of their most unnatural and most miserable lives....

“If, in common with these medicines, then, every medicinal force will produce its own peculiar local effect, when swallowed by the mouth, why, in the case of ‘uterine disease,’ of all others, should any woman submit to the local application of any remedy that cannot be used thus without the odious manipulations of the persons whose conduct every right mind, when properly instructed, must deprecate?

“But, as a matter of fact, these manipulations, so far from curing any disease of the womb or its appendages, have actually set up in the sound structure a very large share of the possible diseases for which these people pretend to apply them; and some of the disorders thus set up too frequently cease only with the life of the victim. Men of England! if you only knew what your wives and daughters needlessly—mark that word!—needlessly experience at the hands of those ruthless cheats, your brows would burn with shame and indignation. How such brutality as these creatures practise ever came to pollute our shores, is one of the miracles of the times. A proper feeling in the minds of our women should have preserved them from the humiliation and torture to which they have been subjected; while Englishmen of all ranks should have united, long ere this, to expel from the land the sordid wretches who first introduced the grossness and indecency of the hospitals of Paris to the houses and hearths of a too-confiding nation!”

Again, the Author of “Physic and its Phases” brands these counterfeit professors with infamy in racy and vigorous verse:—

“Men, are you men—who lead such hybrid lives,
Who, being surgeons, sink into midwives?
If with the sex you seriously would vie,
Why not the distaff and the spindle try?
Throughout the Orient, Arab, Turk, and Jew
On such occasions, never send for you;
Not even the Nubian, by the harem door,
Dare show his face, until the birth is o’er.
Talk of the sanctity of married life—
Nation of fools! who thus degrade the wife!
At such a moment, when the feminine mind
Shrinks from the succour of her nearest kind,
Could you do worse, were she a courtezan,
Than to her chamber introduce a man?
No longer left to woman’s gentle care,
Travail is now her terror everywhere.
······
Once in the sick room, with an eye to fees,[58]
Tales they get up of uterine disease;
Disease, the realms of Physic never knew,
Till ‘speculating Simpson’ gave the cue;
And, working thus on woman’s weaker nerves,
They raise whatever ghost their purpose serves.
Then, not the young alone, but graver dames,
Fooled by mere phantoms with un-English names,
Endure ‘examinations’—Ladies, speak!
Do these not shock the soul and blanch the cheek?
Surprise comes first—next horror, ill disguised,
But soon to worse some get familiarized!
For what will trusting woman not believe
And bear, when ‘scientific men’ deceive?
With no suspicion of the game these play,
Their tales of terror haunt her night and day.
Now she dreads ‘tumour,’ now ‘occlusion,’ now
‘Version’ she talks of, with a ‘why’ and ‘how.’
Reasons, of course, and numberless occasions,
Have these quick rogues for their ‘manipulations.’
But who—immortal truth!—can justify
The frightful means they locally apply?
Caustics, that keep their patients always ill,
Yet ever ready to indorse their skill;
While abscess, ulcer, hæmorrhage itself,
Attest what men may CAUSE for love of pelf.
Note the result—whatever the pretext,
In soul, at least, the woman is unsexed;
Words that of yore would make her forehead flush,
She now blurts out to men without a blush!
Heavens! how can husbands, fathers, brothers lend
Their countenance to such an odious end!
In all the animal kingdom, where or when
Were such things needed—tell us, Englishmen!
Of ‘base chirurgery’ let the world take heed,
For this is base chirurgery indeed!”

Dr. Ewell, in the introduction to his Letters to Ladies, says:—

“The serious object of my present solicitude is to wrest the practice of midwifery from the hands of men, and transfer it to women, as it was in the beginning, and ever should be. I have seldom felt a more ardent desire to succeed in any undertaking, because I view the present practice of calling on men, in ordinary births, as a source of serious evils in child-bearing; as an imposition upon the credulity of women, and upon the fears of their husbands; as a means of sacrificing delicacy, and consequently virtue; and as a robbery of many good women of their proper employment and support.

“Several observing moralists have remarked that the practice of employing men-midwives has increased the corruption among married women. Even among the French, so prone to set aside the ceremonies between the sexes, the immorality of such exposures has been noticed. In an anecdote of Voltaire, it is related, that when a gentleman boasted to him of the birth of a son, he asked who assisted at the delivery; to the answer, ‘a man-midwife,’ he replied, Then you are travelling the road to cuckoldom! The acutely observing historian of nature, Count Buffon, observes, virginity is a moral quality which cannot exist but with purity of heart. In the submission of women to the unnecessary examinations of physicians, exposing the secrets of nature, it is forgotten that every indecency of this kind is a violent attack against chastity; that every situation which causes an internal blush is a real prostitution....

“But the opposition, the detestation of this practice cannot be so great in any husband as among some women. The idea of it has driven some to convulsions and derangement; and every one of the least delicacy feels deeply humiliated at the exposure. Many of them, while in labour, have been so shocked at the entrance of a man into their apartment, as to have all their pains banished; others, to the very last of their senses, suffering the severest torments, have rejected the assistance of men. To be instrumental in relieving one of this truly interesting class, will be a heavenly consolation to all who can be alive to the pleasures of serving the virtuous.”

Dr. Beach, in his work on Midwifery, has the following:—

“Who shall officiate in parturition? In consequence of the practice which prevails in the present day, this has become a grave question. The physician contends, with much zeal, that it is his province to officiate. Females, he alleges, are incompetent; and these assertions of physicians have influenced the minds of females to such an extent, that they are forcibly impressed with the belief that there are no others competent; and when it is proposed to many women to employ a midwife, they appear to shrink with horror, and many even suppose that in trusting themselves to the most accomplished female accoucheur, they jeopardize their lives....

“The physician takes it for granted, and even boasts, that if he can attend one single case of midwifery in a family, he has for ever after secured their patronage; so that both interest and prejudice operate as obstacles and barriers to any improvement or change in the practice; and although the most fearful consequences have (occurred), and are still daily occurring, modern females cling to this unnatural practice.

“Notwithstanding, however, the existence of the above obstacles, we are well assured that females, if rightly qualified, are not only as fully capable as men, but are even more so; and, therefore, the most valid and conclusive reasons may be assigned why a reformation should take place in this department of the practice. What more conclusive than the fact of the actual attendance of women in child-birth in all nations, previous to the sixteenth century; and the attestation of competent persons during the first century of man-midwifery to the fact, that not half so many fatal cases occurred before as after the innovation. And, in the first settlement of this country (America), when females[59] attended exclusively on such occasions, it was as rare a fact to hear of a woman perishing in child-birth, as it is now to hear of an Indian or an animal perishing in labour, who are delivered by the unaided powers of nature.”

A letter, addressed by Sir Anthony Carlisle, late President of the College of Surgeons, to the late Sir Robert Peel, on the attempt by some members of the medical profession to legalize man-midwifery, is well worthy of the perusal and consideration of our readers. The letter appeared in the Times newspaper, and raised a ferocious howl from the men-midwives; but the ever gullible British public looked upon the affair as a mere medical question in which it had no concern, and the howl carried the day against reason, morality, and truth:—

“Sir,—The high ministerial station which you deservedly occupy, must often expose you to the various kinds of applications respecting the condition and management of our national institutions, and also to personal or partial interference about their several real or pretended interests. In all such instances you must perceive the fairness and the ultimate advantage of preferring direct information from the respective constituted authorities, of requiring advice from rival institutions upon doubtful measures, and of regarding with jealousy the private communications of interested individuals. It is, however, reported that you are, at this time, beset upon the subject of introducing an ordeal for licensing men-midwives, by certain members of the London College of Surgeons, and that you are urged by popular men (whose wisdom and disinterestedness may be questioned) to favour their scheme with your powerful influence.

“As the prevalent vice of avarice may have some share in this professional movement, it is fit that you and the public should be acquainted with the probably concealed effects of granting the solicited privileges; and, for the reasons already given, I am induced to address you through the press.

“Man-midwifery has only been practised in England during the last hundred years, and it was introduced as a French fashion. From the beginning it has been strongly opposed on the score of its indecency, by many distinguished and scientific medical men; and also, because the birth of mankind appears to them to be a purely natural process, so wisely ordered, that it very rarely demands any other aid than experienced mothers can safely give. Even so late as the illustrious mother of his present majesty, that exemplary Queen was personally attended by good Mrs. Draper, without difficulties or misadventures; whereas the contrary result, under male management, in the fatal affair of the Princess Charlotte and her infant, will be long remembered.

“If it should be asked why so many professional men addict themselves to a degrading vocation, it may be answered, that the practice of man-midwifery leads to unlimited power in every family, and thence to lucrative ends. Women, naturally timid, and ignorant of their own structure, are peculiarly exposed, during the most important office of their existence, to the persuasions or menaces of more knowing persons, and they are thence easily made to believe, that the natural and wholesome delays and pains of childbed are within the controul of medical or surgical art—an assumption which is too generally acted upon, and with unvarying evil consequences; because it is a violation of the ways of nature. Men-midwives have continually alleged that ignorant women practitioners commit many fatal mistakes, and now they present similar objections against unlicensed men. If, as I believe, the safeguards of child-bed are amply provided for by nature, and that not one instance in a thousand calls for any other help beyond what any moderately experienced woman can give, why are we to license adventurers, who may seek notoriety by desperate acts, often involving manslaughter—operative acts, the moral propriety of which is very doubtful, and the time and the methods for performing them still subjects for rancorous disputes? But the present affair is not respecting the utility of men-midwives, but the impropriety of empowering any special corporate medical body to coerce the rest; to further impede female-midwives in a becoming duty, and to deprive delicate women of that great resource of self-respect. Already the prevalence of man-midwifery has driven country surgeons and apothecaries to adopt this humiliating office, and the number of women practitioners has been thence so reduced, that paupers are in many places delivered by apprentice boys under sixteen years of age. The Royal College of Physicians in London, who rank the highest for learning and decorum, have lately rescinded their admission of licentiates in midwifery, whether for considering the practice as derogatory to a physician, or as an overweening privilege towards females and children, is not avowed; but it seems that no London physician, educated at Oxford or Cambridge, has yet condescended to be a man-midwife. The Royal Colleges of Surgeons in London, in Dublin, and in Edinburgh, have likewise hitherto renounced every connexion with man-midwifery.

“The teachers of midwifery are indiscriminately doctors and surgeons; but at this moment the majority of lecturers and superintendents of lying-in charities are physicians, while a multitude of legally appointed sub-physicians (styled apothecaries) are equally entitled, with the other classes of the faculty, to establish tribunals for examining and licensing candidates for man-midwifery, if they should deem it expedient. Finally, it may be noted, that the different classes of men-midwives have never yet agreed among themselves to adopt a common ordeal for certifying the qualifications of their calling, and you may be assured, Sir, that many worldly interests will rage against the establishment of any monopoly of this kind in any single institution, because man-midwifery is the covert way to medical fortunes. If, however, the greediness of a few individuals should expose this subject to free discussion, and the judgment of married men and modest women should be copiously awakened, perhaps the general custom of employing women may be again resorted to, and their competent instruction publicly enforced.

“It is said, that our changeable neighbours at Paris are already tired of their fashionable freak; and when our countrywomen reflect, that not one in ten thousand of their sex throughout the globe allow of the presence of a man during the rites of child-bed, they may acquire courage, and unite their efforts to replace the routine of midwifery among themselves. I will not offend you and the public by any observations upon the outrageous stories collected on this occasion, to prove the violent and fatal injuries committed by unlicensed men-midwives, because I think the privilege sought for would increase those evils.

“With the greatest respect, I have the honour to be, your very obedient Servant,

“Anthony Carlisle.
“Langham-place, Feb. 19.”

“In a recent number of the North British Review appeared an excellent article on ‘The Employment of Women;’ under the head of women doctors, the writer says: ‘But the something practical—where is it?’ We believe that a great deal, which is very practical, is scattered over this article. But we have still some further suggestions to offer. Not very long ago, a statement ‘went the round of the papers,’ to the effect that there were already eight diplomatized female physicians practising in Boston (U. S.), and that there were thirty-eight students in the Female Medical College. ‘Whenever,’ says an American writer, ‘there are sufficient data to establish the truth (now little if at all disputed in America), that child-birth is freed from its worst difficulties and dangers when the unnatural presence of men is dispensed with, the medical and surgical care of women and children will pass into the hands for which nature designed it.’ There would appear to be nothing very unreasonable in this, but, on the contrary, something extremely rational and hopeful. But see how the facts stated above are received by the faculty in England. The leading medical journal of this country thus comments upon them:—

“‘Female physic thrives apace in America. At Boston, where Columbia gave birth to the young Constitution, which is now sowing its wild oats broadcast, there is a female medical college, numbering thirty-eight students. A grant of government money has also been voted towards establishing a similar institution at New York. This is to be under the immediate superintendence of Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., late of St. Bartholomew’s, with a bevy of those spinsters mentioned by Shakespeare as free “maids who weave their threads with bones” for anatomical demonstrators.

“‘At Boston, moreover, there are eight doctoresses with diplomas in full practice. We suppose some of these female physicians are married, and this involves a great social mystery of which we have as yet received no account. When the Mrs. M.D.’s are attending to patients in their boudoirs of consultation, or pointing out pathological nicknacks in their anatomical drawing-rooms, or going their rounds with stethoscopes in their bonnets, what are their husbands doing? Do they superintend the perambulators, or are these hitched on to the professional broughams of their mammas? Is it a part of the husband’s marital duty to manage the nursery—in short, to attend to the domestic affairs generally? Perhaps matrimony is ignored altogether. Indeed, we do not well see how a conscientious doctoress could promise to love, honour, and obey a husband who might order her to give her patients a dose of strychnia all round.’

“Surely this is not the way to deal with so grave a question. Argument must be wanting, or the sneer would not be resorted to by so distinguished an authority. The same questions as are here put might be employed also to write down any description of independent female labour. When women go out to teach drawing or music, or when they attend to shops, or make caps and bonnets, gowns or mantles, what, it may be asked, are their husbands doing? Attending to their own business, if they have any, or living on their wives’ earnings, Mantalini-like, if they have not. We do not mean to say that there are no practical difficulties in the way of the effectual working of this scheme. Objections will readily suggest themselves; but they are not insuperable objections. All women may not be fit for such work. But all men are not fit for it. Many women will lack the necessary amount of nerve; but many men lack it also. In difficulty and danger women have great presence of mind. They are often calm and collected where men are unhinged and unbalanced, and incapable of exertion. Women have more tenderness and more patience, and they must necessarily understand many female ailments better than men. They will always have one great advantage over male practitioners—female patients will be more unreserved in their communications to them. Many women have been sacrificed to their delicacy—to their repugnance to state fully their ailments to men-doctors; perhaps even to call them in until it is too late. Let such objections as these be fairly balanced against those which may be adduced against female practitioners, and let us calmly consider the average result.

“We do not pretend to know, under the existing order of things in Great Britain, what proportion of children are annually brought into the world without the assistance of any male practitioner. But we know that in humble life it is very common to employ only a nurse or midwife. And we do not believe that, under such circumstances, more dangerous cases of parturition occur than where men are professionally employed. But if such were the case, if the number of deaths or injuries were proportionately greater, no argument could be derived from the fact against the employment of educated and diplomatized women. If, in the present state of things, accidents arise from the absence of men, it is not on account of the sex, but on account of the ignorance of the practitioner. The same amount of knowledge, as indicated by the diploma, existing in both cases, we cannot help thinking that the advantage, in most cases, will be on the side of the female attendant.

“We might pursue this subject much further; but time and space have alike narrowed to a small compass, and we have by no means exhausted our notes. In the early part of this paper we have touched on the subject of nurses, but rather in connexion with amateur than with professional labour. Many women of a better kind might find profitable employment in this path of life; and if licenses, or diplomas of an inferior class, indicating a certain amount of medical and physiological knowledge, were granted to them, the business would not be beneath the adoption of women of birth and education. But here again, perhaps, the jealousy and selfishness of men would step in and thwart our efforts; for the presence of such educated nurses would often render it wholly unnecessary to call in a regular practitioner at all.”—North British Review, No. LII. page 333.

“Among the highly civilized and numberless ladies and women of China[60] and the East,” says Sir Anthony Carlisle, “ordinary matrons are universally employed in the sanctuary of child-birth: and they would revolt with horror from any proposal to admit the presence of a man.” This statement, coming, as it does, from such a high authority, when inveighing against the needless outrage upon the modesty of women, which we commit by the employment of men-midwives, cuts from under them the argument of the interested professors of “the art,” who would have us believe, that British women, from the peculiarities of the climate, and a high state of civilization, are more liable to accident and danger in the parturient state, than the women of those countries in which the fashion of man-midwifery is unknown.

Even Roberton, one of themselves, is compelled to admit, that any argument based upon climatic influence is fallacious, and easily capable of disproof, for he says, in his apology for the study of midwifery as a science:—“In reply to such a statement as this (Sir Anthony Carlisle’s), it has been common to argue that, in warm countries, the parts concerned in admitting the passage of the child are so relaxed, that labour becomes comparatively easy; and that hence we are to account for the nonemployment of accoucheurs. This is a very false view of the subject. In warm countries, whose inhabitants live after the same manner as ourselves, parturition is in no degree easier than it is here. In the town of Sierra Leone, so near the equator as latitude 8° north, we are assured by Dr. Winterbottom, who resided there, that having been present at a number of labours, they in every respect resemble those of women in the same situation of life in England. “I have met,” says he, “with instances in England where the fœtus was expelled with more ease than I ever knew it to be at Sierra Leone.”...

“The prophetical writings of the Old Testament furnish many allusions to painful parturition. The Jews inhabited a warm climate; and yet, were we to judge of parturition among them from the frequent reference the prophets make to it in figures and similes, when predicting the sufferings to be produced by impending judgments, we should conclude that in no people was nature’s sorrow more severe. Thus, Jeremiah, the coming miseries of Judah passing before his vision, exclaims:—‘I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, and the anguish as of her that bringeth forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion that bewaileth herself, that spreadeth her hands.’ A multitude of passages containing a similar allusion might be cited. In the historical part of the Scriptures, too, there is incidental mention of several cases in which parturition proved fatal. So much for the relaxing influence of a warm climate! a notion which, like various others respecting the influence of climate on the human system, is at variance with facts.”

Among the myriad peoples inhabiting the vast Continent which, in the aggregate, we term India, men-midwives are unknown. There have been, no doubt, attempts made by Europeans to introduce the abominable custom, but we believe, excepting in some of the towns most frequented by them, without any considerable success. As the inhabitants of Tahiti, and the isles of the Pacific, once the abode and very Paradise of nature in her glorious perfection, have found to their cost, so we fear in all other portions of the world’s surface, where our boasted civilization has set its foot, the evils which accompany its progress invariably take precedence, and largely preponderate over its advantages. Wherefore should we add to the primal curse fulminated against woman, irrespective of locality or race, “in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children,” a far greater one in the ruin of her modesty, by the introduction of man into the sanctuary hallowed by his absence from the beginning of the world. O ye fine ladies of England, who talk so glibly of all the virtues, and blazon your moral excellencies before the nations! if ye will not take example from the highly civilized and numberless ladies and women of China and the East, learn from the poor savage, in whom, though doomed to the lowest grade of earth’s inhabitants, there yet glows fresh from Heaven, like a pure star gleaming through the night of heathenism, that loveliest attribute of woman—modesty. Over that mysterious rite which God has confided to the female sex, the rude, wild, cruel, ignorant, uncivilized, naked, idol-worshipping natives of New Holland, throw a veil impenetrable to man. Roberton says, page 480, “Among them (the New Hollanders) a man is not permitted to approach where parturition is going on.” There are, however, rare and beautiful exceptions to that accursed fashion which now so debases the women of this country; for we have undoubted authority for stating that “there are ladies, and ladies of rank, titled ladies, who would not let a man near them.” In these bright examples propriety still finds a refuge; in their chaste minds the light of reason and refinement shines with a fair and unsullied ray amidst the gloom of apathetic indecency, which shrouds in its cold and clammy cerements so many of their sex. All honour to those true-hearted women who so proudly uphold their native modesty, their sex’s loveliest charm, above the rank pollution which, in these sensuous and degenerate days, infects the sanctuary of marriage.[61]

Among the Jews, the peculiar people, guarded and preserved so wondrously by the Providence of God, from the day that Israel went down into Egypt with three score and ten souls, until they had multiplied “as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore,” no such violation of decency was permitted or required to insure the fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham. We learn that females were regularly authorized and appointed as midwives, for the Sacred writings give us the names of two of them: “And the King of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphah, and the name of the other Puah: and he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools: if it be a son, then ye shall kill him; but if it be a daughter, then she shall live. But the midwives feared God, and did not as the King of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men-children alive. And the King of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men-children alive? And the midwives said unto Pharoah, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them. Therefore God dealt well with the midwives: and the people multiplied and waxed very mighty. And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that He made them houses.” We know also that there were physicians in those days, for “Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father, and the physicians embalmed Israel.” Now, it is most certain that if the great protecting power of the Jews—the father of his people, had deemed it necessary or proper, for the safety of mothers or of offspring, to afford any assistance beyond that which nature and the midwife supplied, it would have been so ordained, and as surely mentioned by the great historian and leader of the Israelites, or by some other of the sacred writers; but of this there is no sign whatever, and we must, therefore, infer that this innovation was not so much as thought of by the Jews, highly civilized and vicious people as they were, and that it was reserved for us, in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, to permit such a scandalous breach of decorum as the prostitution of our wives to the impure touch of a man-midwife. Roberton says, in his Apology—“But an objector will ask, cannot a matron practise these expedients? and if so, where is the use or propriety of such a class as men-midwives? I reply, doubtless a matron may practise many of the expedients referred to, if they have been taught her. It is of the value of midwifery as a science, originating with and practised by men, compared with matron or uncultivated midwifery, of which I have been speaking. A certain proportion of instructed female midwives in a community may, for aught I know, be a benefit.” Let the reader mark, learn, and inwardly digest these words! Here is the admission of an accoucheur of the present day, confirming the words of Roussel, and the many other authorities whom we have quoted, as to the fitness of women for the practice of the expedients necessary in midwifery, and, further, a most important acknowledgment, as coming from one of his class, that females, properly instructed as midwives, would be a benefit to society. To be sure they would! Who doubts it? And is there not enough of wealth, and energy, and right feeling in England to say—We will that there shall be in every community properly instructed midwives; we will that there shall be organized, in all our great towns, schools of midwifery for the instruction of women,[62] who shall go forth from them fully competent in “nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand,” to perform that office which is now, from their sex, so indecently performed by men. The instruction of midwives has nothing of novelty in it: women are so instructed in the Dublin Lying-in Hospital, at this day, and we believe[63] that they are so instructed at Manchester and in London; they “walk the hospital,” as the term is, for six months, and at the end of that time they receive a “diploma;” but there is a jealousy on the part of the accoucheurs, who fear, naturally enough, that their trade (a very lucrative one[64]) might be injured if these women should assume too much responsibility, and the consequences of this jealousy[65] are injurious to the full and complete instruction and competency of the “nurses.”[66]

These nurses are very much in the power of the accoucheurs, for it is principally through the latter’s recommendation that they obtain employment, at least among the upper classes, and the evils which arise from this state of things are fatal to the interests of morality. The nurse is afraid to act without the man-midwife, not because she is incompetent, for she has walked the hospital and has her diploma of efficiency, but because it essentially concerns the man-midwife to play the principal part, in order that the belief in the necessity for his presence and assistance should not, by any act of hers, be shaken; such is their jealousy on this head, that we have known the man-midwife, on arriving too late to be present at the birth, roundly rate the nurse of his own appointment for not having sent for him sooner, although the case was of the most ordinary description, and great additional ease of mind and general comfort were experienced by the patient, through the absence of the doctor.[67]

The nurses in their six months’ training at the hospital learn much, however, that is useful to them in their own after-practice, for many of them are employed by the humbler classes from motives of economy, and we would fain believe of delicacy also. Through one of these nurses we have learnt the frightful indignities to which the poor hospital patients are sometimes subjected. A difficult case of labour, as it is termed, occurs, the wretched victim is stripped naked, candles are placed around the bed, and the students assemble in crowds, perched on ladders and benches, to watch the progress of the labour, and the manipulations of the operator. O God! that in a Christian land, in our boasted Britain, priding herself on her civilization and proprieties, such orgies, which would raise a blush amidst the rites of devils, should disgrace the name of science!

We have said that women are admitted as pupils at the Lying-in Hospital in Dublin, and that after a six months’ probation they obtain a diploma: but, as they are never permitted to operate in any but ordinary cases, it cannot be intended that their education should obviate the necessity for the employment of accoucheurs. Now we would suggest, that instead of this partial instruction they should be afforded ample opportunity for acquiring a perfect knowledge of the expedients necessary for overcoming the difficulties of their profession; that, instead of dismissing them at the end of six months, they should be retained until they are sufficiently instructed to be able with confidence and facility to undertake those extreme cases which are now reserved to men. No man of intelligence, who reflects on this subject, will for a moment doubt that where nicety of touch and delicacy of handling are required, the female organization is more perfectly adapted for them than that of men; and when we consider the delicate duties to be performed in midwifery, we cannot but think (and the thought will find an echo in the minds of thousands) that woman, and woman alone, is both morally and physically fitted for the office.[68] It may possibly be urged by the men-midwives, that, if they were to be deprived of their ordinary practice, and to be superseded by women, in all cases of labour in which no extraordinary difficulty presented itself, they would not be so well prepared to operate when accident might call for their interference. We may in all justice reply, what is that to us? see ye to that; are we to prostitute our wives to your impure touchings, “manipulations,” tentatives, and experiments, in nine hundred and ninety-nine needless cases, in order to afford you the requisite experience for the thousandth? We trow not; and the science of surgery must indeed be at a low ebb if, when occasion requires, there are not to be found men of that noble profession who could undertake with success any needful operation.

In former times the difficulties in certain cases of parturition, which are now trumpeted forth by the writers on man-midwifery “with all the pomp and state of academic learning,” were easily overcome by discreet and experienced women, who, although innocent of physical, classical, or mathematical science, knew full well how to operate when necessity called for their intervention. We find the following passage in Albertus Magnus:—“Whence it is to be known that in some women there is greater suffering than in others, because in some it happens that the fœtus sometimes presents a hand, and sometimes a foot, all which are hurtful. Then the midwives carefully thrust back the fœtus, and hence great pain is produced, so that many women, unless very robust, are weakened even to death,” &c. Then, after describing the effect of an accident which sometimes occurred even with the more appropriate assistance of the female hand, but which[69] if the truth was known, since the invention of instruments has probably been of much greater frequency, he continues: “Then discreet midwives use a certain ointment, anointing the vulva, because the womb is often injured and wounded in the vulva, and therefore it is necessary that discreet women and experienced in this operation should be employed in delivery.[70] But this I have learnt from some women, that when the fœtus presents its head in the outlet, then the business fares well, because then the other members follow without difficulty, and an easy labour is the result.”[71]

To the casual reader who has the curiosity to wade through the filthy and disgusting details of the ponderous tomes on obstetricity, for the most part garnished with engravings at which “purity must blush and licentiousness may gloat,” and who incontinently pins his faith upon the dogmas thereof, it will seem absolutely incomprehensible how unit after unit, of millions on millions numberless, who have peopled earth, contrived to see the light, from the days of our general mother Eve, until that happy hour when first “obstetric science” flashed upon the world, and by its magic touch scattering the dreams of a primeval curse, vouchsafed its “art” to teach poor feeble ineffectual nature how to act.

One result of the frightful tissue of imaginable and unimaginable horrors contained in these books, is that almost every woman in the upper and middle classes believes that the chances are ten to one in favour of a “cross birth;” the nurse, instead of relieving her fears, rather confirms them, and on the strength of that understanding which always prevails between the nurse and the man-midwife, she takes care to impress upon the sufferer, wrought up to a pitiable state of nervous excitement, that nothing but the beastly manipulations of the “doctor” can render the labour successful.

Women, while suffering under the severe pangs of parturition, most frequently lose much of that natural delicacy belonging to the sex, and at the moment when terror and anxiety overrule every other feeling, the man-midwife approaches, and offers to the trembling victim that disgusting insult, the examination per vaginam; an inquest both morally and physically injurious to the patient, and utterly needless, from the information previously obtained by the female attendant.

Furthermore, these men well know that “one fool makes many,” and that the more they are able to convince the public of the dangers and difficulties of child-birth, the more sure are they of an unfailing trade in the practice of man-midwifery. Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coute, and when they had successfully achieved one generation of patients, the rest was easy; all henceforward was plain sailing; the mothers, despite the qualms of outraged delicacy, once convinced that their safety had been dependent on the skill of the man-midwife, the daughters, as a matter of course, followed in their wake; the idea, if perchance it occurred, of the indecency of the act, being promptly set at rest by the recollection that their mothers had done the same. Thus a kind of freemasonry is established between the men-midwives and women, which, from its very nature, cannot be free from gross impropriety, and is sometimes attended with most pernicious consequences, of which the husband is kept in entire ignorance.[72] It is a common occurrence in ordinary life to see the man-midwife seated as a guest at your dinner-table, or as a morning visitor in your wife’s drawing-room, who perhaps but a few weeks before may have informed himself both by touch and sight of all the inmost secrets of her person, who knows as well as you do yourself every hidden charm which she possesses. Faugh! the very thought is gall and wormwood, and outraged delicacy demands instant and eternal redress.

Sir Anthony Carlisle, late President of the Royal College of Surgeons, assures us that child-birth, like parturition in the lower animals, is purely a natural process, the safety of which Divine Providence has most wisely secured; and consequently that it is always mischievous to tamper with pregnant women, under the pretence of hastening, easing, or retarding their delivery. Roberton, in allusion to the above, says—“If this be correct, it follows of course that midwifery is no science, but a presumptuous fraud.”[73] Again he says, “Admitting, as I do, not that ninety-nine in a hundred, but that a large proportion of labours, say nineteen out of twenty, would terminate well under the eye of an intelligent nurse, were they left solely to the energies of nature,”[74] &c.; and again, “I have admitted that a considerable proportion of labours would do well, unaided, under the eye of a nurse,” &c.[75] Dr. Johnson says—“The ordinary treatment of women in child-bed is irrational, indefensible, and most preposterously foolish. Nothing can be more absurd. Childbirth is not a disease! It is simply the performance of a natural function, like eating, drinking, &c., yet we treat it as though it were some formidable and dangerous malady. Dr. Conquest, a London accoucheur of repute, says—‘Child-birth is that natural process by which the womb expels its contents, and returns to the condition in which it was previously. I call it a natural process; and in my opinion no sentiment is more pregnant with mischief, than the opinion which almost universally prevails, that this process is inevitably one of difficulty and danger. I am well aware that some degree of suffering is connected with child-birth; and this applies equally to the whole animal creation, whether human or brute, though the former suffer more than the latter, because the habits of brutes are less unnatural. That the suffering of women during child-birth is referrible, in a great degree, to their artificial habits of life, and not to their form and make, is evident from a variety of circumstances. History, in all ages of the world, establishes this position. What made the striking difference between the ancient Hebrews and Egyptians, of whom it is said: “The Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them?” What, I would ask, made the marked difference in the labours of these two classes of women, but the plain, simple, and industrious habits of the Hebrews, as contrasted with the effeminacy, and luxurious living of the Egyptians? Look into more modern history, and you will see the same fact established again and again. I could mention innumerable proofs, but a few must suffice.

“‘The celebrated traveller, Bruce, says, that the Abyssinian women retire by themselves, and go through the process of child-birth with so much ease and expedition, that they do not confine themselves a day after labour, but return to their usual occupations immediately.

“‘The same simplicity, expedition, and freedom from danger, attend this natural process amongst the natives in most parts of Asia, Africa, the West Indies, and America, where the mode of living among the natives is more simple and abstemious, and their occupations and general habits more laborious, than in more civilized countries.

“‘The Moorish women have no midwives, but are usually alone at the time of delivery, lying on the ground under an indifferent tent. They will even travel, on the same day, a distance of fifteen or twenty miles.

“‘In Morocco the women suffer so little, that they frequently go through the duties of the house on the day after their delivery, with the child on their back.

“‘One respectable traveller assures us, that with the native Africans labour is so easy, and trusted so entirely to nature, that no one knows of its existence till the woman appears at the door of the hut with the child.

“‘Another, equally respectable, tells us, that as soon as an American Indian woman bears a child, she goes into the water and immerses it and herself.[76] One evening he asked an Indian where his wife was: he replied: “I suppose she has gone into the woods to set a trap for birds.” In about an hour she returned with a new-born infant in her arms, and holding it up exclaimed: “Here, Englishman, here is a young warrior!” Were it necessary, many more instances might be brought forward. But it has been said, this occurs only in warm climates, where the heat relaxes the parts concerned in parturition. This objection is not consistent with truth, for the natives of Livonia, and the savages of North America, retire to some private place, and return immediately after their delivery to their customary work; and the Greenlanders do all their common business just before, and very soon after their labour, and a still-born or deformed child is seldom seen or heard of among them. Still further to establish the assertion that human parturition is not necessarily a process of danger, we know that in this country servant girls, who become illegitimately pregnant, very often absent themselves for an hour or two, and, after giving birth to a child, return to the discharge of their household duties immediately.[77] It is, therefore, obvious that the difficulty and danger that so often attend child-bearing in civilized society,[78] are attributable, principally, to unnatural customs and habits of living, in which, women, in this and other countries, indulge from their infancy,[79] and which operate by preventing the constitution from acquiring its proper firmness and vigour, and by producing a weak, feeble, and irritable state of body, &c.’” Dr. Johnson adds: “This is the language of Dr. Conquest—a metropolitan accoucheur physician of much eminence—a man who, from the long and successful practice of his profession, has deservedly acquired wealth and distinction—a man, therefore, who can afford to be honest—a man who, unlike Archdeacon Paley, can afford to keep a conscience. With those, therefore, who put their trust in authority rather than in the light of their own reason—that is to say, with nine hundred and ninety-nine persons out of every thousand—the opinions of such a man as Dr. Conquest cannot fail to have more than ordinary weight.”[80]

In the foregoing pages we have sought to place before our readers, in the clearest light, the opinions of Roussel and other eminent men, touching the practice of man-midwifery; opinions the force and truth of which, based as they are upon principles of the purest morality, and the sound doctrines of physical science, cannot be controverted or denied. We have shown that the Royal College of Physicians, so lately as the year 1827, designated the practice of man-midwifery as “an art foreign to the habits of gentlemen of enlarged academical education,” and one which might safely be entrusted to discreet matrons. We have, in confirmation of these opinions, quoted the sentiments expressed by Sir Anthony Carlisle, late President of the College of Surgeons, who styles the boasted “art” “a pretence,” and accoucheurs “mere nurses.” We have proved, by the admission of men-midwives themselves, that the great majority of cases of midwifery would do well under the eye of a nurse, and that skilled midwives would be a benefit in every community. We have before our eyes the example of France with her schools of midwifery; and against the arguments and dispassionate opinions of men of the highest rank in the medical profession, mooted as they have been at various times, and in different countries, yet all tending to the same conclusion, we find absolutely nothing but the self-interested doctrine of an anomalous class[81] of medical men, whose policy it is, for the furtherance of their own selfish views, to decry the powers of nature, and to abrogate the employment of females in the sanctuary of child-birth; a doctrine which suffers its disciples, regardless of all delicacy, and in defiance of the contempt of their professional brethren, to prey upon the weakness and natural timidity of the sex, and with presumptuous indecency to arrogate to themselves duties proper only to women; a doctrine which, while it deals an irreparable blow[82] at the very heart of every family, threatens with destruction virtue, modesty, and honour.

Husbands, fathers, countrymen, THINK OF THESE THINGS!

We do most heartily believe that if, unbiassed by the self-interested and fraudulent assertions of quackery and empiricism, you would exert your own reasoning powers on the question, the doom of this abuse would soon be sealed. But as, in many another usage which men individually admit to be blots in that high state of civilization to which we have advanced, our apathy overcomes our desire for their correction, and we let them pass; so, because this wrong has forced its prostituting influence through the length and breadth of the land, magnified and sustained as it is by the terrorism of treatises, and the artistic display of its abettors, despite the warnings of our consciences, we yield ourselves to its guidance, we dare not lift up the veil which conceals its abominations, and even fear, cowards that we are, to question its privileges, privileges which a “damned custom” has accorded; privileges the very thought of which should make the blood curdle in our veins with disgust and horror! For if we for a moment reflect upon the precepts laid down in the indecent farragos of “obstetric science,” and further upon the fact, that these precepts are invariably carried into effect, whenever the “patient” can be induced to submit to the outrages therein enjoined, we must acknowledge that in all such cases purity itself can oppose no effectual barrier to these insidious assaults, and that modesty must fly from the chamber when the man-midwife crosses its threshold.

O hateful, horrible thought! that the young bride, radiant with joyous innocence, and love’s glowing fantasies, “beautiful exceedingly,” and pure as fair, must in a few short months, in blind obedience to a spurious custom, yield herself to the pollution of a stranger’s touch, and banish for ever from her husband’s soul that dear delicious dream, entirety of possession!

This is no exaggerated picture, no overstrained description of that mortal stain which rends into very shreds the charm of delicacy; but a simple truth, a terrible reality, not to be glozed over by the fallacious reasonings of frigid philosophy. O men! if you have the souls of men, if one drop of the old chivalrous blood of your ancestors yet palpitates in your veins, if you have not irrecoverably bowed down to the idol custom, if mammon, lust of gain and power, with all the fell catalogue of vicious inclinations, have left but one cell unoccupied in your heart’s mansion, if you yet hold woman to be the fairest, purest, best of the Creator’s works; oh! let the cry of “out damned spot,” rise heavenward from every home in the United Kingdom; let sacred purity once more assert her rights, let nature’s illimitable powers do their work unaided, undefiled by the sordid infamy of charlatanism, and future generations shall gratefully invoke unnumbered blessings on the memory of those who saved the daughters of England from the curse of a cruel degradation.

THE END.

Footnotes:

[1] “In the midst of our apparent material prosperity, let some curious or courageous hand lift up but a corner of that embroidered pall, which the superficial refinement of our privileged and prosperous classes has thrown over society, and how we recoil from the revelation of what lies seething and festering beneath!” Mrs. Jameson’s “Communion of Labour,” pag. 20.

[2] Anno 1663. Vide Roussel, Systeme Moral et Physique de la Femme, ed. 1855, p. 224, and Astruc, Maladies des Femmes, t. vii.

[3] This surgeon was most probably a person named Chison, of whom Count Bussi Rabutin relates the following anecdote:—“Meanwhile Madame de Crequi went to seek Madame on the day which she had appointed for their party to St. Cloud. She there met Chison, who had come to see one of Madame’s girls who was ill; he is La Valiere’s medical man, and is facetious and witty; after he had learned the complaint of the young lady, Cheer up, said he to her, I have remedies for all, even for lovers’ hearts. Ho! G—— G——! replied Madame, teach me them directly, for ten or a dozen that I have, whom I should like to cure, provided it costs me only a few garden herbs. Ha, Madame, replied he, it costs me much less than herbs, it costs me nothing but words. In fine, Chison, who sacrificed everything for the entertainment of Madame, related to her how the king had sent to him to inquire, and that he had demanded, with extreme emotion, whether Mademoiselle de la Valiere could really survive, and if her leanness was not a bad symptom. And what was your answer? replied Madame. What, said he, can your highness be in doubt? I assure you that I promised him, with as much boldness, the prolongation of her years, as if I had a letter from Heaven. I spoke as a philosopher of life, and death, and destinies; it needed nothing (when I saw the joy of the king) but to have promised him an immortality for the girl. True, G——, cried Madame; what secret charms has the creature to inspire so great a passion? I assure you, replied Chison, that it is not her body which supplies them.”—Hist. Am. des Gaules. Amours de la Valiere, page 430.

The “witty and facetious” Chison spoke with a certainty which experience alone could give; he had doubtless attended La Valiere in her “confinement.” Do such conversations ever occur now? There is nothing new under the sun; what has been will be, and the laureate, not without reason, sings in Maud:—

“Yonder a vile physician blabbing
The case of his patient.”

[4] Alison’s History, page 111, vol. i.

[5] Ibid. page 180, vol. i.

[6] Alison’s History, page 217, vol. i.

[7] Astruc, des Maladies des Femmes.

[8] Ex-Maitresse Sage-Femme, Surveillante-en-chef de l’Hospice de la Maternité et de la Maison Royale de Santé et de l’Administration Generale des Hôpitaux et Hospices Civils de Paris; Docteur en Médecine de l’Université de Marbourg, &c. &c. &c.

[9] Since this was written we have ascertained that a Charity, called the “Royal Maternity Charity,” has existed for a century in London. “It was instituted, 1757, for the gratuitous delivery of poor married women at their own habitations. The patients are attended in their lying-in by skilful and well-taught midwives, (of whom there are now thirty-five), under the watchful superintendence of appointed physicians, by one of whom the midwives are first carefully instructed at the charge, and expressly for the service of this charity; and, being located in various parts of the metropolis, and not restricted, in the exercise of their profession, to the patients of the Charity solely, though such patients are, at all times and without exception, to have the preference, their services are available to any other persons, who, either from choice or necessity, may be desirous of employing a midwife instead of a medical man; and as these occasions are not rare, some of the midwives having from fifteen to twenty private patients per month, it is not among the least of the advantages incident to the establishment of the Royal Maternity Charity that it is the means of keeping up a class of respectable, intelligent midwives for such emergencies.”—Prospectus of the Royal Maternity Charity, office 17, Little Knight Rider-street, Doctors’ Commons, London.

[10] “It must be acknowledged that, although the function of midwife belongs to the healing art, it was never intended to be exercised by men.”—Roussel, page 217.

“It is incompatible with the general infirmities of human nature to expect that the medical profession, exercised as it is for the daily means of maintenance, can be filled with men of science, with philosophers, or even with honourable gentlemen, while the greatest number are remunerated according to the quantity of drugs they craftily sell at random, as pretended antidotes, and others follow the business of mere nurses, with all the pomp and state of academic learning.”—“On Health,” by Sir Anthony Carlisle, F.R.S., late President of the Royal College of Surgeons, and Surgeon of the Westminster Hospital. 1841.

[11] “Others, many others, less industrious, have been amusing and facetious. It is not long since I stood by the bed of a lady, who, between every pain, was making merry in talking with the nurse; and, the moment after the head and no more was born, commenced giving me an amusing account of one of my patients, a relative of hers, whose ailments, she assured me, arose from inattention to my rules of diet.” (!!)—Roberton, Physiology, &c., page 459.

Oh, Roussel, how prophetic were your words!

[12] Roussel, p. 222.

[13] Female physicians were still known at Rome in the time of the Emperors, according to this verse of Martial,

“Protinus accedunt medici medicæque recedunt.”—Hecquet.

[14] Olympias, Sotira, Salpe, Laïs, all cited by Pliny, and many others of whom distinguished authors make mention.—Hecquet.

[15] Stevens’ Man-Midwifery Exposed.

[16] Hecquet says: “The provinces at a little distance from Paris still find this custom very revolting.”—De l’Indecence aux Hommes d’accoucher les Femmes, page 8.

[17] “In labours strictly natural, terminating after a few hours of moderate suffering, scientific midwifery is passive; its interference extending only to the division of the funis.”—Roberton.