The broad ground I take on this subject is this: educate THE PEOPLE in all matters pertaining to health; let physiology and hygiene be taught at the fireside and in the schools as much as any other science. At a proper age let both sexes throughout be taught all that may be concerning pregnancy and childbirth; and, all this accomplished, let those of both sexes practice whom skill, talent, and experience dictate. Educate the PEOPLE, and they will find out soon enough who are the most competent, and who are not, to practice the healing art. As to the talk we hear so much of at this day about _the indecency of man-midwifery_, it is idle twattle, that scarce needs a remark. Indecent for a man to get up of a cold, wet night, and attend a poor, suffering woman in labor, and night after night, as not unfrequently happens! Indecent for us to resort to the use of instruments with which to destroy the life of the unborn child, in order to save that of the mother, as must sometimes, with the best possible management, be done! Away with all such foolishness, and the worse than false modesty which dictates it! They ought to take shame on themselves who utter it. Yes, friends, I will tell you in a word how I feel in this matter. When I was born, my most worthy mother was very young. I was her first child. And since I have come to years of understanding, and often when I have attended women in childbirth, I have thought it was not possible for me to be thankful enough to that good old man—and who is yet living—for attending my mother at my birth, young and inexperienced as she was; and although I know that I could now teach him some things, which in his hoary age he does not at all understand, I have yet often felt in my heart that I would go leagues long to take him by the hand, that I might thank him for the good he had done. Depend upon it, friends, there are only two things that can induce _men_ to practice midwifery; and these are, first, that it may be necessary for a man so to do, in order to get his living; and, secondly, if he be a benevolent man, he will most gladly relieve suffering, if he can be the means of doing so. And do not physicians, almost to a man, the world over, attend the poor in childbirth, gladly and willingly, when they know they are to receive from them no pay whatever, except such as God gives them? Is it said that man-midwifery leads to licentiousness? I answer, go to the veterans of the “godlike art”—those who have toiled long and hard in their calling, and who will not consent to relinquish it so long as their powers of body will allow them to pursue it, and ask them to tell you candidly, if the practice of midwifery has made them bad and unprincipled men? Mark, they will tell you, “No; but rather our knowledge of woman’s sufferings, and the pains and perils which we have but too well and sadly often learned that it is her lot to endure, have chastened us, and made us more what we ought to be.”