merited the respect and veneration of the Romans, and which of old had been the principle of the grandest revolutions. Cato, always careful to protect the hearts of the citizens from corruption, would never have permitted their wives, when presenting children to the republic, to tarnish the boon by a forgetfulness of the first of all decencies."[12] "The Greeks," says Dr. Stevens, "invariably employed women; Phanarete, the mother of that distinguished man, Socrates, was a midwife. Hippocrates makes mention of them; and Plato speaks somewhat extensively of midwives, and explains their duties." "We have reason to believe," says Dr. Denman, "that the obstetric art was altogether in the hands of women, _the natural delicacy of females having reluctant recourse to the professional aid of the other sex_." Hecquet says, "The Greeks, moreover, had their female physicians, as we perceive by the words [Greek: akestrides] and [Greek: eatrinai], which have been preserved to us." "Such was the chasteness of the times, that lithotomy on the female subject was practised by one of their own sex. At Athens the positive enactments of the land were inefficient to overcome their scrupulous modesty. It is said the Athenian doctors procured a legal enactment transferring the practice of midwifery to themselves; but at the very attempt the women rose _en masse_, and declared _they would die rather than submit to such an outrage_ upon common decency.... The Romans[13] also employed women only. Pliny, in his _Natural History_, speaks of midwives,[14] explains their duties, and mentions some of great reputation. According to Roman law, midwives were recognized as a distinct class in society, and enjoyed certain rights and immunities in common with the medical profession."[15] We have shown, on the testimony of medical writers, that the practice of _man_-midwifery was introduced in France, or rather in Paris, for it was never generally adopted in the provinces,[16] so early as the end of the seventeenth century; but more than a hundred years elapsed before the unnatural and debasing custom became fashionable in England: and we find that late in the eighteenth century it was considered so objectionable, that few persons, excepting in those rare cases where danger was imminent, ever permitted "a medical man" to usurp the duties of the midwife: and it is only within the last fifty years that _man_-midwifery has prevailed in these kingdoms. Indeed Dr. Ramsbotham, in 1845, in the preface to his work on obstetric medicine and surgery, alludes to the difficulty which it would appear had not even then been entirely got rid of, in overcoming the very natural aversion of women to the regulations of midwifery practice as laid down in the many swollen and prurient treatises on the "pretended art."