"It is difficult to treat of this subject (times of Louis XV.) without disclosing particulars at which purity may blush, or on which licentiousness may gloat; but general observations make little impression on the mind even of the most reflecting reader, if not attended with a detail of facts which proves that it is well founded; and one authentic example of the manner of the court and aristocratic circles in Paris, anterior to the Revolution, will produce a stronger conviction than whole chapters of assertion. All that we read in ancient historians, veiled in the decent obscurity of a learned language, of the orgies of the ancient Babylon, was equalled, if not exceeded, by the nocturnal revels of the Regent Orleans, the Cardinal Dubois, and his other licentious associates."[6] Such is a faithful picture of the manners and vices of the age and country in which the custom of man-midwifery took its rise. Here and there a bright star shone out, the brighter for the blackness of that hideous night: men of the highest order of mind did all that great eloquence and vigorous thought could do to stay the strong and turbid current of pollution which threatened to overwhelm the human race, and amongst these great spirits of the past, the physician Roussel, in a work remarkable for the delicacy of its sentiments, the force of its satire, and the strength and power of its language, endeavoured to turn the attention of his countrymen to the indecency of the practice which was first adopted in the harlot De la Valiere's chamber.[7] In some measure he succeeded; but who can wonder if, in that vicious age, his eloquence had passed unheeded, and the delicacy of his sentiments had been scoffed at and derided by the charlatans of the day, in a city where adultery was the fashion, and marriage but a cloak for vice. The causes which then prevented the writings and counsels of these eminent men from taking full effect upon the public mind, no longer exist; and, accordingly, in that very Paris, where, in former times, amidst such scenes of vice and profligacy as the historian describes, the immodest practice originated, has since sprung up an agitation against it, which is increasing day by day. Colleges, both metropolitan and provincial, have long been established for the instruction of _females_ in the obstetric "art," and many of those women, who have been educated in them, possessed such talents and intelligence that the treatises written by them have become the acknowledged text books of the French medical world.