[42] "The Samoeides are a tawny, squat, miserable race of pagan savages, subjects of the Russian empire. They are found along the Frozen Sea, on the European side of the Jugorian Mountains, east of these on the River Oby, and elsewhere on the vast shores of Siberia. According to Tooke, they are mature at a very early age," &c.--_Roberton_, quoting _Tooke's Russian Empire_, vol. ii. p. 286. [43] "The truth is, that when the pregnant will submit to prepare themselves for what is before them, will be temperate in their eating, regular in their hours for sleep, and for exercise daily in the open air, a considerable proportion may secure benign labours. It is the sedentary and luxurious who oftenest suffer severely in parturition," &c. &c.--_Roberton's Notes on Pregnancy_, p. 460. [44] Roberton has a remark to the same effect. [45] "The beasts ca't manipulated."--_Shepherd on the Phrenologists, Noctes Ambrosianiae_, vol. ii. p. 21. [46] "The calling of 'accoucheur' does not appertain to men. It is with them nothing but a usurpation, or a rash experiment, founded upon the timidity of women, who believe that, by this unworthy submission, they insure their lives; and upon the credulity of husbands, who, by this dangerous condescension, imagine that they more surely preserve their wives."--_Hecquet, De l'Indecence aux Hommes d'accoucher les Femmes_, page 9. [47] "Ubi non est mulier, ibi ingemiscit aeger." Where woman is not, there the sick man groans. [48] "At the time when this work was published, there had appeared a catechism, in which M. Dufot, a physician, who was the author of it, proposed to himself to instruct the midwives in the country, and he set forth in a manner clear, exact, and perspicuous, the principles of the art of midwifery. It would be desirable that these ideas, which are sufficient for their purpose, should be disseminated; they would prepare the public to do without the help of men in an office where their agency seems necessarily to compromise morals. This object, to which some men only gave the attention which it deserved, is doubtless the one which has urged some intendants to occupy themselves in the instruction of midwives. We learn from the _Gazette de France_, of 25th September, 1776, that the dame Ducoudrai, commissioned and pensioned by his Majesty, had, by the care of M. Fontette, chief magistrate (intendant) of Caen, organized more than a hundred and fifty midwives in two public courts which she had held. That example, without doubt, will not be lost on the provinces; whatever the price of knowledge may be, it is in such close contiguity to the temptation to abuse it, that I dare hardly put up any prayers for my country. In all the County of Foix, where I was born, deliveries are intrusted to women of the lower order, who never have the least idea of anatomy, and with whom the whole art is reduced to some practical and traditionary customs. But they display zeal, patience, and uprightness,