C. _Midwifery._ It has been shown that the employment of women in the arts of medicine, nursing and teaching was chiefly, though not entirely, confined to the domestic sphere; midwifery, on the other hand, though occasionally practised by amateurs, was, in the majority of cases, carried on by women who, whether skilled or unskilled, regarded it as the chief business of their lives, and depended upon it for their maintenance. Not only did midwifery exist on a professional basis from immemorial days, but it was formerly regarded as a mystery inviolably reserved for women; and though by the seventeenth century the barrier which excluded men had broken down, the extent to which the profession had in the past been a woman’s monopoly is shown by the fact that the men who now began to practise the art were known as men-midwives. The midwife held a recognised position in Society and was sometimes well-educated and well-paid. Nothing is known as to the mediæval history of midwifery in England; and possibly nothing ever will be known concerning it, for the Englishwoman of that period had no impulse to commit her experience and ideas to writing. All the wisdom which touched her special sphere in life was transmitted orally from mother to daughter, and thus at any change, like the Industrial Revolution, which silently undermined the foundations of society, the traditional womanly wisdom could vanish, leaving no trace behind it. Even in the Elizabethan period and during the seventeenth century, when most women could read and many could write, they show little tendency to record information concerning their own affairs. But the profession of midwifery was then no longer reserved exclusively for women. The first treatise on the subject published in England was a translation by Raynold of “The Byrth of Mankynd.” He says in his preface that the book had already been translated into “Dutche, Frenche, Spanyshe and dyvers other languages. In the which Countries there be fewe women that can reade, but they wyll haue one of these bookes alwayes in readinesse ... it beinge lykewyse sette foorth in our Englyshe speeche ... it may supply the roome and place of a good Mydwyfe, ... and truly ... there be syth the fyrst settynge forth of this booke, right many honourable Ladyes, & other Worshypfull Gentlewomen, which have not disdayned the oftener by the occasion of this booke to frequent and haunt women in theyr labours, caryinge with them this booke in theyr handes, and causyng such part of it as doth chiefely concerne the same pourpose, to be read before the mydwyfe, and the rest of the women then beyng present; whereby ofttymes, then all haue been put in remembraunce of that, wherewith the laboryng woman hath bene greatly comforted, and alleuiated of her thronges and travayle.... But here now let not the good Mydwyves be offended with that, that is spoken of the badde. For verily there is no science, but