Hints to Husbands Part 3

"Without seeking for examples beyond those to which we shall refer, we might disabuse ourselves of so dangerous an error, if we would compare, without prejudice, even in our own climate, the women in the rural districts with those resident in towns. The former, having their attention continually diverted by their necessary occupations, often find themselves in the middle of their pregnancy almost without perceiving it, and this is already a great deal gained. This novel state, without changing anything in the course of their health, or in their way of living, obliges only some preparations more necessary for the infant than for themselves.

Arrived at the end of the ninth month (as they are never in a hurry to lie in) they do not aggravate the troubles which accompany this function by the anxieties of vexatious expectation. Nature sometimes surprises them in the midst of the rustic employments in which they are occupied during their pregnancy, and which only prepare them the better to support those of labour. Finding in them healthy organs and a calm mind, she operates without obstruction, and, in consequence, delivers them with less suffering and more celerity.[43] The consequences of labour, which are, to the majority of women in towns, in part a real malady, and partly a kind of etiquette and convention, which subjects them, during a fixed period, to the regimen of sick persons, when they have ceased to be so, are almost nothing to women in the country. Nature, having neither caprice nor excess to combat in them, only occupies herself for their re-establishment; and as they yield nothing to custom or opinion, they enjoy as much as possible the favours of nature. They have not time to crawl methodically, during many weeks, from their bed to a sofa; they have almost always that courage which increases their powers, and which necessity sometimes gives even to women resident in towns. Among these even it is by no means rare to see the wives of poor workmen, who walk to a midwife at the moment of parturition, and who return the next day free and exempt from accidents, which the woman of higher rank does not always escape, in the midst of the studied precautions which are taken on her account; their condition in life does not permit them to be inconvenienced for more than three or four days. It seems that nature gives us powers in proportion to the necessity that we have to make use of them. We have known a young girl who found the means to conceal from her parents the humiliating signs of her weakness, and the operation which relieved her from it. As her pregnancy was not legitimate, she had not the right to be an invalid.[44]

"As for most women in towns, and above all those of the upper cla.s.ses, instead of courage capable of annihilating the sentiment of evil, all concurs to nourish a pusillanimity in them, which renders it more vivid.

The eager curiosity with which they endeavour to find out whether they are pregnant, the new regimen to which they submit themselves when they are declared to be so, the preparations, the anxieties, the alarms, real or feigned, which reign around them, the number of persons who besiege them, the inaction to which they are condemned, should give them a frightful idea of their state, and would seem to deprive them of the ability to make use of their proper powers, and so to render them of no effect. The feebleness and inertia of their minds, pa.s.sing to their organs, cannot but dispose them to a stormy pregnancy, and prepare them for a painful and sometimes fatal labour. The instinct which watches for the preservation of our lives, which knows so well how to manage its resources in the most serious evils, must weaken and lose itself amidst the throng of succours with which the patients are sometimes overwhelmed. What could it have to do when so many are acting for it?

"Delivery is an animal function which, in all likelihood, nature had no desire to render a disease. This function exercises itself almost without pain and without danger in the brute. In all places where the means of a.s.sisting it have never been reduced to art, women have ordinarily labours less severe and more fortunate than in those localities which swarm with accoucheurs and midwives. Whence comes this distinction, if it is not from the difference of manners and methods of treatment in the one and the other, or from the abuse which, in the latter places, is made of a pretended science?

"If the delicacy which results from a luxurious and inactive life renders the movements of the womb more painful, we should attribute the irregularity which renders them sometimes fatal to the mother and the child, to a disordered sensibility, which is excited by attempts almost always ill-directed, and almost always executed by mischance. It is in this disturbance that the infant a.s.sumes those disadvantageous positions of which the accoucheurs and midwives unquestionably exaggerate the danger, to put a higher value on their 'manipulations;'[45] but which, in effect, render the delivery longer and more laborious: disturbance maintained and augmented by the embarra.s.sment which the presence of a number of persons, some dear, others odious, some unknown, who in general fill the chamber of a woman in labour, must naturally produce, BY THE TORMENTS OF A MODESTY TOO LITTLE REGARDED, by an air of importance too much affected, which the a.s.sistants, and others who are to operate, throw over the affair in which they are engaged. All these objects must excite a variety of sentiments in the woman, which, by distracting her mind, necessarily disturb the organic action of the parts which should perform the delivery. Happy is it, if too presumptuous accoucheurs and midwives do not, by their precocious tentatives, solicit in her a nature which is not yet prepared to engage itself, precipitate its movements, and consequently abort the fruit which they ought to await, weary the parts already too much irritated, and rendered too sensible by the o.r.g.a.s.m and tension which they have suffered, and hurry both mother and child into inevitable ruin.

"Women who have the good fortune not to be annoyed by numerous attendants, and in whom nothing discomposes nature, are seldom subject to those catastrophes which, very far from bringing discredit on the operator, who is often the cause of them, only make him appear the more necessary.

Nature, when she works alone, knows so well how to combine and graduate her action that she does that only which she ought to do. Ah! why should she not with ease accomplish an operation for which she has foreseen, and well prepared everything? Why should she not succeed in extracting with facility from the centre of the womb, from an active, flexible, and very vigorous organ, a body which is familiar to it, and which, from its form and consistence, cannot much injure the parts which it touches? Why should she be embarra.s.sed in bringing to light an infant whose situation is so near the outlet through which it is to issue, she whom we have sometimes seen conducting, without accident, pointed or sharp-edged bodies through the windings of the urinary ducts, and the tortuous folds of the long pa.s.sage of the intestines? There are, besides, operations which she loves to execute in silence and in secret. This delicate instinct manifests itself even in some species of animals, which never fulfil certain functions in presence of witnesses, and fly from the gaze of man to perform them. Delivery, from its nature, and from all the circ.u.mstances which characterize this function, is one of those which, in the human species, requires most especially to be covered with a veil. It cannot be doubted that they would a.s.sist her in a way the most efficacious, if the number of persons in attendance on a woman in labour was limited to two or three of her most intimate friends, who, by a gay and lively manner, should divert her from her sufferings, or by their confident appearance pacify her apprehensions; and to a midwife, whose presence of mind, patience, reserve, and protection should be a guarantee for her tranquillity. It is not to be doubted, I say, that a woman would be by those means more effectually succoured than by the tumultuous a.s.sistance of a number of persons, sorrowful, aghast, impatient, whose multiplied and often mis-directed attentions magnify in her imagination the evil which she must endure, and the danger which she fears, and above all by the awful appearance of a man ever ready to operate, always armed with suspicious instruments, and to be dreaded from his s.e.x.

"It must be owned that although the midwife's function belongs to the healing art, it was not intended to be exercised by men.[46] The character of this function, the small amount of knowledge which it requires, the entire and absolute confidence which persons of the same s.e.x must naturally have in each other, in fine, everything demands for it the agency of women; this employment seems their proper existence; they possess all the advantages necessary to fulfil it with success. We know with what address and with what dexterity their hands, small and supple, glide and insinuate themselves everywhere without annoyance, capable of penetrating to the very source of the evil without augmenting it, and conveying the remedy to the part diseased, without awakening, by the act, pangs which had been allayed.

"It is these precious talents, as well as that delicate attention capable of divining the wants which there is not strength to express, and that enlightened sensibility which knows how to regard the very caprices of the complaint, which gave rise to the proverb, honourable to the s.e.x, that wheresoever there is a suffering being, his sighs summon woman to console him.[47]

"They will tell us that long and serious studies, to wit, physics, mechanics, and even mathematics, are necessary to insure skill in the art of midwifery. Eh! where is it that they have not introduced, especially of late, physics and mathematics? All that which is material; all that which is within the jurisdiction of the senses, belongs, without doubt, to physics and to mechanics: one could not move a step, one could not lift a straw, without its being done by the laws of physics; but every one performs these mechanical operations, as the Bourgeois gentleman did prose, that is to say, without suspecting it. There are natural mechanics with which not only all men, but even all animals are acquainted without having studied them. All perform actions, without having been trained to them, wherein sparkle the most subtle mechanics; all know of themselves, and without previous practice, how to a.s.sume the most convenient postures which their different wants demand. Those who compose treatises on midwifery describe at great length the position which a woman ought to take during labour, and that which is proper for the accoucheur. The legs of this latter, say they, ought to describe an angle of _forty-five degrees_. An operator, to give l.u.s.tre to his art, may well appeal to that of mechanics and geometry; but he ought not to say that it is above the capacity of women. The sole difference which exists, perhaps, between them is, that a woman, in abandoning herself to her natural dexterity, in liberating herself from the constraint of a fixed position, and in effecting the movements which circ.u.mstances require, rather than those which the rule demands, will go about the work better than the man-midwife gravely moored (_affourche_) at his _angle of forty-five degrees_.

"The art of midwifery, stripped of regulations, useless or of little moment, and of the frivolous finery wherein it has been arrayed, reduces itself to a very small number of simple principles,[48] easy to attain, and most suitable to the capacity of women. They soon learn what are those faulty positions which the infant may take in the womb: what are those which they may rectify; and those which, not being remediable, leave nothing to the address of the operator but the wise resolution to diminish, as much as possible, their inconveniences.

"Again, it must be considered, that those principles are not to be applied, excepting in cases wherein nature, insufficient in herself, demands the a.s.sistance of another's hand; for, by the avowal of accoucheurs themselves, natural labour, which is and ought to be the most common, can conduct itself without the intervention of art. We may then conclude, with certainty, that accoucheurs who 'manipulate,' who instrumentalize us much as they can, most frequently do it without necessity, and from this cause are prejudicial to the success of the operation. We may also, in that way, reduce to their just value the exaggerated details which they give of pretended obstacles which they have had to overcome, of the address and dexterity which was necessary to surmount them; details which seem intended to show that the delivery had been their work, or that, at least, much of it was theirs, and very little nature's own.[49]

"Either, in the time of the Greeks, women were delivered with greater ease than now, or they judged better than us of the true degree of influence that the midwife or the accoucheur possesses in this function. By the appellation which they gave to their midwives, it appears that they limited them to the duty of cutting the umbilical cord; they called them [Greek: omphalotomoi], umbilical cord-cutters. The females of animals perform this operation with their teeth; and as the umbilical cord can in their case do without a ligature, there are authors who doubt whether it is as essential in man as many persons pretend. There are observations for and against it. This is not the place to discuss this question; but we believe that they may much deceive themselves if they look upon the umbilical cord as a simple continuation of the vessels of the child or of the mother, and not as a fragment of affinity which only serves, for a certain time, as a point of communication established between the mother and the infant, that nature retains so long as she requires it, but which she leaves to decay, and fall away, when it is no longer useful to her.

After the delivery she contracts, compresses, and closes up the part of the infant to which it adheres; and by intercepting the blood and the life which gives it subsistence, she soon causes it to wither and dry up, without any prejudice to the child.

"Although the easiness of the art of midwifery might have been, among the ancients, a motive for intrusting it to women, they also doubtless had a regard for natural propriety, which suggested that the infant, on coming into the world, should be received into the hands of a midwife, to pa.s.s into those of a nurse, and from the hands of the nurse into those of a governess, who should prepare him to receive from men a masculine education. A repository so weak and so delicate would perhaps have found, in the rough and unbending kindness of the latter, aid less adapted to its state; it required a gentle and yielding support, knowing how to be pliant as itself, the better to defend it. In fine, the care of infancy is the destination of women; it is a task which nature has a.s.signed them. It is woman who must bear the infant during nine months in her womb; _it is woman who ought to facilitate the means of its exit_; it is woman who should furnish the first nourishment which it requires; in fine, it is woman who should keep watch over the first developments of its organs and of its mind, and prepare it for the lessons which should elevate it to the condition of man. But the princ.i.p.al 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.[50] This was an object to which ancient governments had always special regard.[51] 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 medical men 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_, 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 favour by a forgetfulness of the first of all decencies. All nations were sufficiently agreed, up to the middle of the last century, never to admit the agency of men in delivery. M. Astruc[52] alleges that it was not until 1663 that they began at court to make use of a man-midwife, and this was, say they, on one of those occasions when honour in danger takes counsel but from the perplexity which misleads it, and violates one part of its rules to save the other. Who would believe it? It was shame which compelled recourse, for the first time, to men. A king, who knew the force of example on the throne, and who wished to conceal his weaknesses, and to be tender of the delicacy of her who shared them, believed that he could not place in better hands an interest so dear. It is thus that Jupiter sometimes confided to the inferior G.o.ds, rather than to the G.o.ddesses, his embarra.s.sments, and the care of concealing from the eyes of Juno the fruits of his infidelities. Whatever it might be, _unquestionably it was not in a tranquil moment that a woman could, for the first time, make up her mind to abandon herself to the mercy of a man to deliver her_. The first examples having been given by those persons whose rank and condition carried opinion with them, the usage of men-midwives is since extended and spread with that rapidity which is common to all inventions of luxury, although even physicians[53] are themselves forced to expose its inconveniences."[54]

CHAPTER V.

"----Mine honour's such a ring: My chast.i.ty's the jewel of our house, Bequeathed down from many ancestors; Which were the greatest obloquy i' the world In me to lose."

Mrs. Jameson, in her admirable essay, "The Communion of Labour," most truly observes--"That some departments of medicine are peculiarly suited to women, is beginning to strike the public mind." Again, in her "Sisters of Charity," she quotes the following words of the late Dr. Gooch:--"Many will think that it is impossible to impart a useful knowledge of medicine to women who are ignorant of anatomy, physiology, and pathology. A profound knowledge, of course, would not, but a very useful degree of it might--a degree which, combined with kindness and a.s.siduity, would be far superior to that which the country poor receive at present. I have known matrons and sisters of hospitals with more practical tact in the detection and treatment of disease than half the young surgeons by whom the country poor are commonly attended."[55]

"Perhaps," says the author of "Women and Work," "there is no profession which so calls for women as that of medicine. Much suffering would be saved to young women if they had doctors of their own s.e.x, who, with friendly counsel and open speaking, would often prevent many forms of severe disease by attending to first symptoms."

Elizabeth Blackwell,[56] one of those n.o.ble women who, braving the servile conventionalisms of the world, with right and reason, morality and religion on their side, have triumphed over prejudice and bigotry, by firmly establis.h.i.+ng themselves as female physicians[57]--in "an appeal on behalf of the medical education of women," after referring to the establishment and opening of medical schools for women in Philadelphia, Boston, and other towns of the United States, in the nine years since "the first woman was admitted as a regular student to a medical college, and graduated with the usual honours," says:--"In all these places public opinion has expressed itself heartily in favour of the action of the colleges. The majority of the female graduates have entered upon the practice of their profession, and many of them have already formed a large and highly respectable practice. The intense prejudice which at first met the idea of a female doctor, is rapidly melting away. If further evidence were needed of the vitality of the new idea, and its adaptation to a real want in the community, it might be found in the character of the practice which has come to those physicians now most firmly established.

Intelligent, thoughtful women, of calm good sense, who appreciate the wide bearing of this reform, and foresee its important practical influence, have been the first to employ the new cla.s.s of physicians in their families, and encourage them with their cordial approbation."

Dr. d.i.c.kson says, in "The Destructive Art of Healing:"--"One of the greatest obstacles to the progress of medical truth in England, is the employment of surgeon-apothecaries as midwives--almost entirely monopolizing the practice of medicine by the influence which they have gained over the minds of our women; these people will countenance no physician who does not prescribe large quant.i.ties of useless, and too frequently deleterious medicine.

"The ladies of this country should take a lesson from the American ladies, who not only prefer midwives of their own s.e.x, but actually employ female physicians. Female modesty and morality alike require that the diseases of women should be attended to solely by women; and all through the United States you now meet with regularly-bred female physicians, most of them having the degree of M.D. from a university, and many of them being in the enjoyment of large and lucrative practice.

"We have the pleasure of an acquaintance with Mrs. Dr. Longsh.o.r.e--she is a lady possessing a strong and original mind, close powers of perception and reasoning, and a thorough medical education. As a practical anatomist she has few superiors, even among pract.i.tioners of the 'sterner mould.' Mrs.

Dr. Longsh.o.r.e is 'a Friend,' and her whole character is marked by the excellencies of the 'Friends,' or Quakers, as they are called. Placid, thoughtful, observant, full of sympathy, and governed by an active benevolence, she delights in doing good. Her practice is large, rapidly increasing, and generally successful, and she is devoutly attached to her n.o.ble profession....

"Medicine and midwifery are both domestic arts; woman is all but born a doctor. Ladies of England, think of this. Hitherto you have left the field of 'labour' to men who would be better employed with your distaffs and spindles. Mothers of England, you have a mission--fulfil it; proclaim to your daughters that the birth of a child is not a surgical operation, but a natural process; and that there is no case of parturition so difficult that may not be better managed by a well instructed woman than by a man, whose very presence in the sick chamber disturbs the uterine action, and causes the greater number of difficulties that occur in such cases."

"In a country like England, to clear away a given folly is too often, unfortunately, only to make room for some other folly equally egregious.

This, in our day, has been the case with medicine. Just as a considerable number of physicians had come to adopt my own view of the true const.i.tutional origin of diseases, up sprung a cla.s.s of people who will have it, that in the majority of female complaints, at least, there must ever be more or less of _local wrong_, which no possible const.i.tutional treatment can cure! Whispering mysteriously the words 'engorgement,'

'tumour,' 'inflammation,' 'ulceration of the _os_,' 'version,' and 'retroversion'--phrases for the most part invented for the mere purpose of striking panic into the hearts of families who must ever be in the dark _here_--these men straightway confine the patient to her couch--in which unnatural position they keep her for months, and, if possible, for years together--during which they subject her to the most odious treatment; performing, with speculum, caustic, and other dangerous appliances, the most daring and indecent operations....

"By the people to whose practices I have just alluded a woman is told all possible and impossible things--things the most frightful that imagination can conceive--to cure which, forsooth, she must lie on her back for months. And if this oracular sentence be enforced by two or more of their number, acting in consultation--anglice in _collusion_--the weak creature believes accordingly. From that moment she is the dupe and the victim of the most unprincipled scoundrels, many of whom, by mixing up religion with their medical cant, contrive to bring some of the richer cla.s.s of women to such a state, that they become annuities to those impostors throughout the greater part of their most unnatural and most miserable lives....

"If, in common with these medicines, then, every medicinal force will produce its own peculiar _local_ effect, _when swallowed by the mouth_, why, in the case of 'uterine disease,' of all others, should any woman submit to the local application of any remedy that cannot be used thus without the odious manipulations of the persons whose conduct every right mind, when properly instructed, must deprecate?

"But, as a matter of fact, these manipulations, so far from curing any disease of the womb or its appendages, have actually set up in the sound structure a very large share of the possible diseases for which these people pretend to apply them; and some of the disorders thus set up too frequently cease only with the life of the victim. Men of England! if you only knew what your wives and daughters needlessly--mark that word!--_needlessly_ experience at the hands of those ruthless cheats, your brows would burn with shame and indignation. How such brutality as these creatures practise ever came to pollute our sh.o.r.es, is one of the miracles of the times. A proper feeling in the minds of our women should have preserved them from the humiliation and torture to which they have been subjected; while Englishmen of all ranks should have united, long ere this, to expel from the land the sordid wretches who first introduced the grossness and indecency of the hospitals of Paris to the houses and hearths of a too-confiding nation!"

Again, the Author of "Physic and its Phases" brands these counterfeit professors with infamy in racy and vigorous verse:--

"Men, are you men--who lead such hybrid lives, Who, being surgeons, sink into midwives?

If with the s.e.x you seriously would vie, Why not the distaff and the spindle try?

Throughout the Orient, Arab, Turk, and Jew On such occasions, never send for you; Not even the Nubian, by the harem door, Dare show his face, until the birth is o'er.

Talk of the sanct.i.ty of married life-- Nation of fools! who thus degrade the wife!

At such a moment, when the feminine mind Shrinks from the succour of her nearest kind, Could you do worse, were she a courtezan, Than to her chamber introduce a man?

No longer left to woman's gentle care, Travail is now her terror everywhere.

Once in the sick room, with an eye to fees,[58]

Tales they get up of uterine disease; Disease, the realms of Physic never knew, Till 'speculating Simpson' gave the cue; And, working thus on woman's weaker nerves, They raise whatever ghost their purpose serves.

Then, not the young alone, but graver dames, Fooled by mere phantoms with un-English names, Endure 'examinations'--Ladies, speak!

Do these not shock the soul and blanch the cheek?

Surprise comes first--next horror, ill disguised, But soon to worse some get familiarized!

For what will trusting woman not believe And bear, when 'scientific men' deceive?

With no suspicion of the game these play, Their tales of terror haunt her night and day.

Now she dreads 'tumour,' now 'occlusion,' now 'Version' she talks of, with a 'why' and 'how.'

Reasons, of course, and numberless occasions, Have these quick rogues for their 'manipulations.'

But who--immortal truth!--can justify The frightful means they locally apply?

Caustics, that keep their patients always ill, Yet ever ready to indorse their skill; While abscess, ulcer, haemorrhage itself, Attest what men may CAUSE for love of pelf.

Note the result--whatever the pretext, In soul, at least, the woman is uns.e.xed; Words that of yore would make her forehead flush, She now blurts out to men without a blus.h.!.+

Heavens! how can husbands, fathers, brothers lend Their countenance to such an odious end!

In all the _animal_ kingdom, where or when Were such things needed--tell us, Englishmen!

Of 'base chirurgery' let the world take heed, For this is base chirurgery indeed!"

Dr. Ewell, in the introduction to his _Letters to Ladies_, says:--

"The serious object of my present solicitude is to wrest the practice of midwifery from the hands of men, and transfer it to women, as it was in the beginning, and ever should be. I have seldom felt a more ardent desire to succeed in any undertaking, because I view the present practice of calling on men, in ordinary births, as a source of serious evils in child-bearing; as an imposition upon the credulity of women, and upon the fears of their husbands; as a means of sacrificing delicacy, and consequently virtue; and as a robbery of many good women of their proper employment and support.

"Several observing moralists have remarked that the practice of employing men-midwives has increased the corruption among married women. Even among the French, so p.r.o.ne to set aside the ceremonies between the s.e.xes, the immorality of such exposures has been noticed. In an anecdote of Voltaire, it is related, that when a gentleman boasted to him of the birth of a son, he asked who a.s.sisted at the delivery; to the answer, 'a man-midwife,' he replied, Then you are travelling the road to cuckoldom! The acutely observing historian of nature, Count Buffon, observes, virginity is a moral quality which cannot exist but with purity of heart. In the submission of women to the unnecessary examinations of physicians, exposing the secrets of nature, it is forgotten that every indecency of this kind is a violent attack against chast.i.ty; that every situation which causes an internal blush is a real prost.i.tution....

"But the opposition, the detestation of this practice cannot be so great in any husband as among some women. The idea of it has driven some to convulsions and derangement; and every one of the least delicacy feels deeply humiliated at the exposure. Many of them, while in labour, have been so shocked at the entrance of a man into their apartment, as to have all their pains banished; others, to the very last of their senses, suffering the severest torments, have rejected the a.s.sistance of men. To be instrumental in relieving one of this truly interesting cla.s.s, will be a heavenly consolation to all who can be alive to the pleasures of serving the virtuous."

Dr. Beach, in his work on Midwifery, has the following:--

"Who shall officiate in parturition? In consequence of the practice which prevails in the present day, this has become a grave question. The physician contends, with much zeal, that it is his province to officiate.