[24] Has the doctor first informed the husband of the necessity for this _vaginal examination_? Has he, before entering the patient's chamber, or at least before he dared to make such "a request" to her, gained the husband's confidence by candidly and honestly explaining the indelicate nature of the usages which his "art" permits him to adopt? [25] See Roussel, _ante_. [26] There is a maxim prevalent with accoucheurs, and the hellish aphorism is treated as a jest among them, that a woman will usually desire to patronise, upon all subsequent occasions, the man-midwife who has once introduced his finger _per vaginam_. [27] A foul delusion, promoted and encouraged by the doctor, and the midwife, at his instigation, well knowing, that in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, nothing else would induce a woman to submit to so gross an indecency. [28] "It has been said that women delivered under circumstances where they had no assistance, generally escape laceration; now this is not universally true; but supposing that it were, it admits of this easy explanation: namely, that inasmuch as these females are almost always involuntarily subjected to the deprivation we have mentioned, they naturally use their utmost endeavours to retard the birth of the child when they feel the head in the vagina, in the hope of aid reaching them before the critical moment of delivery; and another reason is, that such patients have been spared the ill effects arising from vaginal examinations, &c."--_Extract from Treatise on Midwifery, by Drs. Hardy and M'Clintock_, page 9. Let the reader compare these observations with those of Dr. Ramsbotham--"look on this picture and on that,"--and then he will be astonished, not at the difference of opinion between the men-midwives, but at the fact that women do so frequently escape the terrible consequences of all this interference with the laws of nature. [29] As if nature would not of herself direct the position most likely to facilitate delivery. "Who ever found the eagle dead upon her eyrie, or the she-wolf in her lair?" and would the doctor have us believe that while giving to man dominion over every living thing, thus recognizing his physical as well as mental superiority, and greatly multiplying the conception of woman, God had forgotten to instruct her in a faculty which he gave in perfection to all the lower animals? [30] Roberton, Physiology, &c., page 425. [31] An instrument called the speculum matricis was, however, in use at the beginning of the last century, and is mentioned in the Bibliotheca Anatomica, 1712. [32] The Speculum; its moral Tendencies. By a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. London: Bosworth & Harrison. [33] Vide Ramsbotham, _ante_.