Hints to Husbands: A Revelation of the Man-Midwife's Mysteries. George Morant
the veil of modesty, which had from the earliest ages, and in all countries, enjoined female attendance, followed the precedent of this abandoned woman, and the practice of man-midwifery soon became general in the French capital.
The historian well and truly describes the state of society in those evil days, and how the manners of the age became, year by year, more lost to virtue, dignity, and honour, until at length all the better feelings of human nature, even religion itself, became a by-word and a mockery amidst the chaos of the Revolution. “The ante-chambers of Versailles were daily besieged by crowds of titled, yet needy supplicants, who eagerly sought employment, favour, or distinction from the king’s ministers or his mistresses, and mandates issued from them were obeyed without a murmur from Calais to the Pyrenees. What, then, was it which, in a country so profusely endowed with the riches of nature, and inhabited by a race of men so brave, so active, and so enterprising, has led to a convulsion attended with the unspeakable horrors of the French Revolution? The answer is to be found in the previous state of the country, and the general perversion of the national mind; in the oppressions to which the people were subjected, the vices by which the nobles alienated them; the corruptions by which morals were contaminated; the errors with which religion was disfigured; the extent to which infidelity had spread.”[4] “Corruption, in its worst form, had long tainted the manners of the court as well as the nobility, and poisoned the sources of influence. The favour of royal mistresses, or the intrigues of the court, openly disposed of the highest appointments, both in the army, the church, and the civil service. Since the reign of the Roman emperors, profligacy had never been conducted in so open and undisguised a manner as under Louis XV. and the Regent Orleans. From the secret memoirs of the period, which have now been published, it is manifest that the licentious novels, which at that time disgraced French literature, conveyed a faithful picture of the manners of the age.”[5]
“It is difficult to treat of this subject (times of Louis XV.) without disclosing particulars at which purity may blush, or on which licentiousness may gloat; but general observations make little impression on the mind even of the most reflecting reader, if not attended with a detail of facts which proves that it is well founded; and one authentic example of the manner of the court and aristocratic circles in Paris, anterior to the Revolution, will produce a stronger conviction than whole chapters of assertion. All that we read in ancient historians, veiled in the decent obscurity of a learned language, of the orgies of the ancient Babylon, was equalled, if not exceeded, by the nocturnal revels of the Regent Orleans, the Cardinal Dubois, and his other licentious associates.”[6] Such is a faithful picture of the manners and vices of the age and country in which the custom of man-midwifery took its rise. Here and there a bright star shone out, the brighter for the blackness of that hideous night: men of the highest order of mind did all that great eloquence and vigorous thought could do to stay the strong and turbid current of pollution which threatened to overwhelm the human race, and amongst these great spirits of the past, the physician Roussel, in a work remarkable for the delicacy of its sentiments, the force of its satire, and the strength and power of its language, endeavoured to turn the attention of his countrymen to the indecency of the practice which was first adopted in the harlot De la Valiere’s chamber.[7] In some measure he succeeded; but who can wonder if, in that vicious age, his eloquence had passed unheeded, and the delicacy of his sentiments had been scoffed at and derided by the charlatans of the day, in a city where adultery was the fashion, and marriage but a cloak for vice. The causes which then prevented the writings and counsels of these eminent men from taking full effect upon the public mind, no longer exist; and, accordingly, in that very Paris, where, in former times, amidst such scenes of vice and profligacy as the historian describes, the immodest practice originated, has since sprung up an agitation against it, which is increasing day by day. Colleges, both metropolitan and provincial, have long been established for the instruction of females in the obstetric “art,” and many of those women, who have been educated in them, possessed such talents and intelligence that the treatises written by them have become the acknowledged text books of the French medical world.
Madame Boivin[8] in the dedication of her “Mémorial de l’Art des Accouchements,” 4me ed., says:—“Moved and affected by the painful cries which mothers, victims of barbarity and ignorance, caused to be heard from far, the Government hastened to reply to them by establishing a practical School of Midwifery within the Lying-in Hospital: from all parts were summoned, not men but women, to come and assist at the lectures of the most eminent professors of surgery and medicine. … Already a great number have, from this fertile source of instruction, derived the knowledge and the qualities necessary for the exercise of an art so important in its results to the population of the kingdom and the happiness of families.” In the preface to the above treatise, 4me ed., p. 10, we read the following allusion to the practice on this side the channel; “Thus you will find in this edition some novel remarks … on certain cases of difficult labour, and on the operative process practised in these cases, so brutally treated by practitioners beyond sea, and in a manner so simple and so happily different by us, especially at the School of Midwifery in Paris.”
And what are we about in “moral England,” all this time? Where are our colleges of instruction, to which we have summoned “not men but women”—our Hospices de la Maternité,[9] wherein and whereby we may preserve the modesty of our women? Where is the voice to cry shame upon the custom which introduces men into the sacred precincts of the marriage chamber to perform offices which are, by nature, the duty of women alone?[10] Shall it be said that two thousand years ago the Romans possessed a higher sense of moral feeling than we do now? Roussel says, “The principal reason which, among the ancients, forbade the belief that the duty of aiding delivery could be proper to any but women—excepting in cases of very rare occurrence, where every consideration might necessarily yield to a pressing danger—was the grand interest of manners. This was an object to which ancient Governments had always special regard. They knew morality to be the foundation of all legislation, and that good laws would be made in vain unless good morals insured their execution. The cruelty of Archagathus’ surgical operations drove the doctors from Rome. She banished also from her bosom the Greek philosophers and orators who were accused of having introduced and cultivated the taste for the arts and vices of Greece. She would surely not have permitted, for any length of time, the existence of an art, which, practised by men, would, under the specious pretence of utility, threaten the sanctuary of marriage, and which, striking a blow at the chief safeguard of families, would next attack the mainsprings of the state; an art which, with power to alarm the modesty of women, would soon leave them without a blush,[11] and cause them to lose even the recollection of that severe virtue which had 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 ακεστρίδες and εατρίναι, 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]
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