A Treatise on the Art of Midwifery: Setting Forth Various Abuses Therein, Especially as to the Practice With Instruments: the Whole Serving to Put All Rational Inquirers in a Fair Way of Very Safely Forming Their Own Judgement Upon the Question; Which It Is Best to Employ, in Cases of Pregnancy and Lying-in, a Man-midwife; Or, a MidwifeNihell, Elizabeth
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A Treatise on the Art of Midwifery: Setting Forth Various Abuses Therein, Especially as to the Practice With Instruments: the Whole Serving to Put All Rational Inquirers in a Fair Way of Very Safely Forming Their Own Judgement Upon the Question; Which It Is Best to Employ, in Cases of Pregnancy and Lying-in, a Man-midwife; Or, a Midwife
Nihell, Elizabeth
Midwifery -- Early works to 1800; Obstetrics -- Early works to 1800
NOT however to imitate what I condemn in them, a gross want of candor to
the women, of whom, by the by, the very best of the men-practitioners
have learnt all the laudable part of practice, I shall allow that among
those frequent examples, of sudden deaths upon delivery, some few might
perhaps be of those unaccountable surprizes with which nature mocks
human ignorance; but then it must be allowed too, that not all of them
admit of that favorable solution. The truth is that nature, to those who
have studied her course, and watched her motions with a due spirit of
practical observation, hardly ever but gives warning enough to prepare
proper obviative methods. It is not here the place to enter into the
discussion of those deaths by sudden hemorrhage upon delivery, of which
I shall hereafter attempt to give a more satisfactory account, as well
as of the measures of prevention, than Levret. My end in the preceding
quotation is to show;
FIRST, that by the confession of the men-midwives themselves, the most
fatal accidents _frequently_, and _inevitably_ happen under them in
spite of all their _science_ and _dexterity_!
SECONDLY, to offer to the reader a reflexion for himself to judge of the
validity of it, to wit, that, not only in the cases of the hemorrhage,
but in many others, where there is a complication of disorders with the
state of pregnancy and parturition, much of the safety of mother and
child must depend on that general medical knowledge, to which the
men-midwives have so little grounds of pretention. Nor indeed, for the
symptoms of necessity for resorting to medical help, have they the same
shrewd prognostic or acute sense as the experienced women, who much
sooner perceive the danger before it is too late, and are neither
with-held by a false shame, nor by a criminal or senseless presumption,
from calling in proper assistence. Such at least has been and still is
their practice in all ages, and in all countries, where the matters of
pregnancy and lyings-in are committed to them. The great object of the
man-midwife is to impose so false a notion on his patient, as that his
partial knowledge is sufficient to every thing. The consequence of which
is, that if he is not too officious, too pragmatical, by way of
ostentation of his art, in common cases, that is to say, where there is
no complication of disorders, every thing may pass off tolerable well,
till the crisis of labor-pains. And in that crisis I defy him, with all
his learning, to equal the female skill and cleverness, not only for
lessening the sufferings of the patient, but for facilitating the happy
issue of her burden.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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