Elizabeth Nihell

“ 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 a burthen! 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. ”

“ Nothing being more agreeable to Nature, to Reason, to Experience, than that the method of practice of a skilful midwife is not only the most easy and gentle, the least painful, but assuredly the most safe both for mother and child. This is what the most severe examination will to those, who give themselves the trouble of making it, establish, in contempt of that fashion, by which so pernicious an error, as that of preferring men-practitioners, has acquired more credit and influence than so salutary and demonstrable a truth, as that for which I am contending. ”

“ May the women then, for their own sakes, for the sake of their children, cease to be the dupes, sure as they are to be in some measure the victims of that scientific 462jargon, employed to throw its learned dust in their eyes, and to blind them to their danger or perdition! may they, in short, see through that cloud of hard words used by pedants, whose interest it is to impose themselves upon them: a cloud, which is oftener the cover-shame of ignorance, than the vehicle of true knowledge, and perhaps oftener yet the mask of mercenary quackery, than a proof of medical ability! ”

“ 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 abhorrence from 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. ”

“ What would be to be done, the true surgeon could hardly do worse than the pragmatical man-midwife, and most probably would perform it much more artistlike, except perhaps in the sole point of striking a crotchet into the brain-pan of a live-child, or needlessly tearing open, with iron and steel, parts so tender and so delicate, as hardly to bear the touch of even the softest hand, guarded with all precaution. ”

“ But if they so falsely exalt their own learning above the ignorance of women; they have their reason for it. They seek to drive out of the practice those who stand in the way of their private interest: that private interest, to which the public one is for ever sacrificed under the specious and stale pretext of its advancement.
Can it then be wrong in any of our sex and profession to endeavour, at least, to justify ourselves, and to undeceive the public, of the ill and false impressions which have been given it of our talents and ability? ”

“ Among the rich, or those able enough to pay for the learned murder of their offspring, how many of their children, even before they have well got hold of life, in this, literally speaking as to them, iron age, encounter their death or wounds, stuck in the brain by a crotchet, or crushed by a forceps, to say nothing of their being now and then ingeniously strangled in the noose of a fillet! ”

“ Yes, an ignorant midwife, without perhaps anatomy enough to know where the pineal gland is, or without so much as having heard the name of the ossa innominata, and with purely her expertness, and with that sort of knowledge she has at her fingers ends, will give you a more useful and practical account of matters, as they go, where it is sometimes so infinitely important to know how they go, than the most learned anatomist that ever dissected a corpse, brandished a forceps, stuck a crotchet into a child’s brain-pan, or tore open a living woman. ”

“ It will 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? ”

“ In short, granted, though it is surely hard to grant, that the wretched women, admitted to this so falsely called Charity, may not deserve much tender consideration; but in what can the poor young pupils have deserved so ill of their parents or guardians, as to be thus exposed to temptations so shockingly indecent? What father, what mother, what considerate relation can paint to himself a child, or charge of his, at an age so incapable of resisting the power of sensual objects, as is that of youth, employed in exploring such arcanums, and exploring them too in vain? ”

“ 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. ”

“ The temptation also of a quick riddance from a violent state of pain, is too great a temptation for a weak woman, overpowered with her actual feelings in that rack of nature, to resist: she acquiesces then, or perhaps her husband, her friends, equally ignorant with herself of the truth of things, and duly simpathizing with her in her impatience of her longer suffering, even virtuously, even piously acquiesce in the recourse to these instruments, which are so sure of destroying the child, and hardly ever fail of doing the mother great and sometimes irreparable mischief. ”

“ But you say, if he is an intelligent one all will be safe. No; he may perhaps know what to do, but will he have the woman’s faculty of acquitting himself of his duty? all the theory in the universe will not do here without the practical part; and will the hands of a man in that respect ever equal the suppleness, the dexterity, the tenderness of a woman’s? once more, is a man made for such work?
I say nothing here of the patience so remarkable in the true midwife on such trying occasions. ”

“ And surely never was a time, when children more required the intercession of humanity in their favor. Mothers can speak for themselves. But the poor infants, so often precluded, by violence, from the pity-moving faculty of their own cry, have nothing but the cry of Nature to plead for them. A cry, the listening to which is prevented by those vain imaginary terrors, inspired by designing Art in the service of Interest, through which Nature is seduced to act against herself, and deliver herself up to her greatest enemies. ”

“ The sacrifice of our reason is what we owe to nothing but to revelation. Books written by men have no title to it. As their understanding is not above the impositions of others, or errors of their own, they may adopt falsities, through ignorance, through prejudice, for want of examination, or of right reasoning. Their heart may also have been byassed or corrupted by views of interest or of ambition. I may therefore, without over-presumption aver, that with regard to instruments, it is wrong to lay any stress on the authority of others. ”

“ For my part, I dare maintain it, that the surgeons, in form of men-midwives, have been the death of more children, with their speculum matricis, their crotchets, their extractors or forceps, their tire-têtes, &c. than they have preserved. If in killing the children, they have saved the lives of some mothers, they have hurt and damaged, not to say murdered, a number of others. Their faults ought to set us upon searching out for a better way of going to work; a more easy, a more safe one. This fatal operation by instruments might even be pronounced absolutely useless in the profession. ”

“ Here I appeal to every reader of common-sense, to every reader who knows any thing of the human heart, whether it can be imagined that any man-midwife, who is called in to the aid of a lying-in woman, will choose to appear in the character of a young practitioner, or of such an one, as that his character is not enough established to dare to use instruments, for fear of after-reflexions. ”

“ But would a woman especially, who loves herself, who loves the child in her womb, and who is capable of thinking at all, sacrifice herself and child to so palpable an imposition, as that of the pretended superiority of the men to the women in this point? She cannot even, well, without repugnance, submit, nor but for the indispensable necessity probably would submit to receive such service even from one of her own sex, whose tender, soothing, congenial softness, must make it more easy and supportable. ”

“ Wherever a case occurs to a midwife, so complicated as to be above her reach, her interest, her reputation, her duty, all conspire to prescribe to her a timely application to a regular physician. She communicates her doubts or difficulties to him, who, at the same time that he receives a just information from her of the state of things, combines it with his own knowledge of the human constitution. ”

“ We owe the most of our rare and precious inventions to the ages of barbarism, in which as yet reigned that brutality and ignorance which the irruption of the northern swarms had diffused over all Europe. This invention and perfection of arts cannot be attributed to merely human industry; but, with more probability, to a particular over-ruling providence, which commonly concealing itself under what seems to us the weakest, and under occurrences which appear to us the effect of chance, have guided men to wonderful discoveries. ”

“ In fact, whoever will, with a competent degree of knowledge of the subject, and of due impartiality, peruse the practical treatises of midwifery, written by the most celebrated practitioners, some of whom have so vainly pretended to the triple union of the characters of man-midwife, surgeon and physician in one person, and it will be found, that all their boasted superiority of erudition, has only led them into the greater errors of practice, and the most barbarous violences to nature. ”

“ A truly great physician will not disdain the lights furnished him by her practical experience, and she knows the bounds of her mechanical duty and profession too well, to interfere with his superior intellectual province, in those points submitted to it. A pragmatical man-midwife, on the strength of his miserable half-learning, would think it a derogation from his character, to call in a physician in supplement to his deficiency, of which he is always ashamed, though indeed he has sometimes the excuse of himself not knowing it. ”

“ The distribution of merit and talents is entirely in the hands of divine providence, that gives what and to whom it pleases, without respect to the quality of persons; forming out of the assemblage of sciences of all sorts, a sort of empire, which, generally speaking, embraces all ages, and all countries, without distinction of age, sex, condition or climate. The rightful claim to solid praise in this empire, is for every one to be contented with his place, without bearing envy to the glory of others. ”

“ Now in such cases, a midwife, though never so skilful, will neither be ashamed nor backward to require such aid: whereas a man-midwife, the more ignorant he is, will be but the more careful of concealing that ignorance, and from the most false prejudice that both the faculties of physic and surgery are implicit ingraftments on the profession of midwifery in a man, will rather let mother and child perish, than call in that assistance, of which he will be ashamed to confess his standing in any need. He will then rashly do the best he can for his patient: but what will that best most probably be? ”

“ And thus the aids and appendages of the art, or what is yet worse, even the abuses of it, pass for the art itself, the main of which, as it undoubtedly consists in the expertness or dexterity of the manual practice, can be so little and so imperfectly conveyed by description. I am however far from denying the benefit which may result to midwives, from consulting all that has been written on this subject. I am far from encouraging ignorance in the women of this profession. Their skill in the manual function cannot but be improved by the addition of a sound and competent theory. ”

“ And women, in a point of the utmost importance to themselves, prove that the men have, in fact, not quite a wrong idea of their weakness, since they are weak enough to countenance a notion, that so unjustly dishonors them in every sense. But that is not enough. What one should imagine, women especially would consider, is that this notion received with its consequential exclusion of those of their own sex, tends to have their own pains aggravated, and the safety not only of themselves but of their so naturally dear children, yet more endangered. ”

“ All I shall then presume to say is, that I very readily leave the decision of the question to Reason, that inward oracle in every one’s breast; an oracle, which, in a cause so interesting to human Nature, can never return a false answer, where consulted by those who deserve to find the truth by sincerely seeking it, with a firm design to sacrifice to it the poor vanity of defending a prejudice, or any other interest of the passions. ”