Hints to Husbands Part 5

THE END.

Footnotes:

[1] "In the midst of our apparent material prosperity, let some curious or courageous hand lift up but a corner of that embroidered pall, which the superficial refinement of our privileged and prosperous cla.s.ses has thrown over society, and how we recoil from the revelation of what lies seething and festering beneath!" _Mrs. Jameson's_ "_Communion of Labour_," pag. 20.

[2] Anno 1663. Vide Roussel, Systeme Moral et Physique de la Femme, ed.

1855, p. 224, and Astruc, Maladies des Femmes, t. vii.

[3] This surgeon was most probably a person named Chison, of whom Count Bussi Rabutin relates the following anecdote:--"Meanwhile Madame de Crequi went to seek Madame on the day which she had appointed for their party to St. Cloud. She there met Chison, who had come to see one of Madame's girls who was ill; he is La Valiere's medical man, and is facetious and witty; after he had learned the complaint of the young lady, Cheer up, said he to her, I have remedies for all, even for lovers' hearts. Ho! G---- G----!

replied Madame, teach me them directly, for ten or a dozen that I have, whom I should like to cure, provided it costs me only a few garden herbs.

Ha, Madame, replied he, it costs me much less than herbs, it costs me nothing but words. In fine, Chison, who sacrificed everything for the entertainment of Madame, related to her how the king had sent to him to inquire, and that he had demanded, with extreme emotion, whether Mademoiselle de la Valiere could really survive, and if her leanness was not a bad symptom. And what was your answer? replied Madame. What, said he, can your highness be in doubt? I a.s.sure you that I promised him, with as much boldness, the prolongation of her years, as if I had a letter from Heaven. I spoke as a philosopher of life, and death, and destinies; it needed nothing (when I saw the joy of the king) but to have promised him an immortality for the girl. True, G----, cried Madame; what secret charms has the creature to inspire so great a pa.s.sion? I a.s.sure you, replied Chison, that it is not her body which supplies them."--_Hist. Am. des Gaules. Amours de la Valiere_, page 430.

The "witty and facetious" Chison spoke with a certainty which experience alone could give; he had doubtless attended La Valiere in her "confinement." Do such conversations ever occur now? There is nothing new under the sun; what has been will be, and the laureate, not without reason, sings in Maud:--

"Yonder a vile physician blabbing The case of his patient."

[4] Alison's History, page 111, vol. i.

[5] Ibid. page 180, vol. i.

[6] Alison's History, page 217, vol. i.

[7] Astruc, des Maladies des Femmes.

[8] Ex-Maitresse Sage-Femme, Surveillante-en-chef de l'Hospice de la Maternite et de la Maison Royale de Sante et de l'Administration Generale des Hopitaux et Hospices Civils de Paris; Docteur en Medecine de l'Universite de Marbourg, &c. &c. &c.

[9] Since this was written we have ascertained that a Charity, called the "Royal Maternity Charity," has existed for a century in London. "It was inst.i.tuted, 1757, for the gratuitous delivery of poor _married_ women at their _own habitations_. The patients are attended in their lying-in by skilful and well-taught midwives, (of whom there are now thirty-five), under the watchful superintendence of appointed physicians, by one of whom the midwives are first carefully instructed at the charge, and expressly for the service of this charity; and, being located in various parts of the metropolis, and not restricted, in the exercise of their profession, to the patients of the Charity solely, though such patients are, at all times and without exception, to have the preference, their services are available to any other persons, who, either from choice or necessity, may be desirous of employing a midwife instead of a medical man; and as these occasions are not rare, some of the midwives having from fifteen to twenty _private_ patients per month, it is not among the least of the advantages incident to the establishment of the ROYAL MATERNITY CHARITY that it is the means of keeping up a cla.s.s of respectable, intelligent midwives for such emergencies."--_Prospectus of the Royal Maternity Charity, office 17, Little Knight Rider-street, Doctors' Commons, London._

[10] "It must be acknowledged that, although the function of midwife belongs to the healing art, it was never intended to be exercised by men."--_Roussel_, page 217.

"It is incompatible with the general infirmities of human nature to expect that the medical profession, exercised as it is for the daily means of maintenance, can be filled with men of science, with philosophers, or even with honourable gentlemen, while the greatest number are remunerated according to the quant.i.ty of drugs they craftily sell at random, as pretended antidotes, and others follow the business of mere nurses, with all the pomp and state of academic learning."--_"On Health," by Sir Anthony Carlisle, F.R.S., late President of the Royal College of Surgeons, and Surgeon of the Westminster Hospital._ 1841.

[11] "Others, many others, less industrious, have been amusing and facetious. It is not long since I stood by the bed of a lady, who, between every pain, was making merry in talking with the nurse; and, the moment after the head and no more was born, commenced giving me an amusing account of one of my patients, a relative of hers, whose ailments, she a.s.sured me, arose from inattention to my rules of diet." (!!)--_Roberton, Physiology_, &c., page 459.

Oh, Roussel, how prophetic were your words!

[12] Roussel, p. 222.

[13] Female physicians were still known at Rome in the time of the Emperors, according to this verse of Martial,

"Protinus accedunt medici medicaeque recedunt."--_Hecquet._

[14] Olympias, Sotira, Salpe, Las, all cited by Pliny, and many others of whom distinguished authors make mention.--_Hecquet._

[15] _Stevens' Man-Midwifery Exposed._

[16] Hecquet says: "The provinces at a little distance from Paris still find this custom very revolting."--_De l'Indecence aux Hommes d'accoucher les Femmes_, page 8.

[17] "In labours strictly natural, terminating after a few hours of moderate suffering, scientific midwifery is pa.s.sive; its interference extending only to the division of the funis."--_Roberton._

[18] Lives there a man who would believe that the strongest pa.s.sion which nature has implanted in the human heart is altogether dead in the _man_-midwife, that he is in fact emasculated by his profession, although "not necessarily an old woman?" It is far otherwise, and many of these gentry have the organ of philoprogenitiveness strongly developed.

[19] By "_le toucher indiscret_," as the French term this hateful indecency.

[20] We are informed that in the Dublin Lying-in Hospital neither nurses in training as midwives, nor male students, are permitted to operate in any case of difficulty. We are not aware if this remark applies to the London hospitals and similar inst.i.tutions in other parts of the kingdom, but we have little doubt that in this respect the practice is the same in all. It is not easy to understand how, under these circ.u.mstances, either nurses or students can acquire much, or indeed any, knowledge for discrimination. It is most painful to reflect that any experience which these persons may ever possess, must of necessity be gained after they are let loose upon the world, at the sacrifice, it may be, of life, or at least of moral and physical suffering, and injury to those patients who are the unfortunate objects of their first essays.

[21] Letter from the Royal College of Physicians to the Secretary of State for the Home Department, dated May 2nd, 1827, in reply to a memorial from the Obstetric Society.

[22] No; because "unmarried females" have not themselves endured these outrages, and still retain a modesty which is born in every woman, and, therefore, might possibly re-animate in the patient feelings which, howsoever natural, beautiful, and holy, would mar "the doctor's process."

[23] "Generally, indeed, no _active_ a.s.sistance is necessary until after the birth of the child," &c. _See ante, Ramsbotham ipse._ "And another reason is, that such patients have been spared the ill effects arising from v.a.g.i.n.al examinations," &c.--_Treatise on Midwifery._ Hardy and M'Clintock. Page 9.

"We here feel ourselves obliged to inform women that those persons whom they employ in this kind of examination deceive them by affecting a knowledge which they do not possess. All information derived from 'touch'

is very uncertain."--_Roussel Systeme Moral et Physique de la Femme. Chap.

sur la Grossesse._

[24] Has the doctor first informed the husband of the necessity for this _v.a.g.i.n.al 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 h.e.l.lish 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 v.a.g.i.n.am_.

[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 circ.u.mstances where they had no a.s.sistance, 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 r.e.t.a.r.d the birth of the child when they feel the head in the v.a.g.i.n.a, 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 v.a.g.i.n.al 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, G.o.d 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_.

[34] "It was to the midwives that they applied, in the first ages of the Church, to be a.s.sured of that fidelity which Christian virgins had vowed to their state of chast.i.ty. But, if the Fathers found fault from the time when Christian females were thus exposed to the judgment of their own s.e.x; if they discovered in this practice something shameful and infamous, of what criminality would they not have taxed the attempt of men at the present day, who, in like cases, are not ashamed to deprive the midwives of this employment."--_Hecquet, De l'Indecence aux Hommes d'accoucher les Femmes_, page 7.

[35] O ye adepts in chloroform, take heed to your ways, and O ye fools, who submit to be made _dead-drunk_ under its influence, beware lest a worse thing happen unto you!