Dr. Kinglake, in reply to Messrs. Wayte and Atkinson, on obstetric practice.

  • Kinglake, Robert, 1765-1842.
Date:
[1816]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. Kinglake, in reply to Messrs. Wayte and Atkinson, on obstetric practice. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    7/18 (page 177)
    rell, could be done by an obstetric practitioner? No sti- nulant medicine would be admissible, no manual aid could ,e usefully offered. Low temperature, and the recumbent losture, constitute nearly the whole assistance that this iopularly terrifying scene of blood, and, as it were, sus- lended animation, would seem to require. Why the practice of midwifery should have passed from he hands of women into those of men, your correspondent nust know is rather a question of history, and of the moral :ircumstances of society, than one of “ reason” or of “ ne- cessity.” The necessity that your correspondent would in- ist on is but of modern date: female parturition must have existed over the habitable surface of the globe ever since he commencement of human nature. Why then should his imperious necessity have been so slow in proclaiming tself? The female system has always been what it now is; ind the population ofr remote antiquity was much more nu- nerous than it appears to be at the present time. The issue nto life at those periods of antiquity appeared to be unen- cumbered by the obstacles that your correspondent recites ; it least, we know that there was no one so skilled in the abstetric art as either to detect or remove them. What sort of necessity, then, is this which your correspondent as- sumes for midwifery to pass from the hands of women to those of men ? It pleads neither antiquity, nor any ancient disadvantages from its not having been known and earlier adopted : it would seem, therefore, to be a necessity rather of artificial than of natural creation, and is, of course, open to the imperfection of all human devices. The “ strong reason” that your correspondent speaks of as the foundation of his assumed necessity, rests on grounds quite as unstable as those of the necessity itself: in short, both the one and the other appear to be derived rather from professional craft, as formerly intimated, than from a philosophical persuasion of its necessity. Your correspondent has, in a way unworthy of his intel- ligence, enlisted into the number of his arguments for the practice of man-midwifery, an assertion that there is not one woman in a hundred who would not prefer a male prac- titioner on midwifery occasions, because they think them- selves more safe! This instance of popular preference on the part of females towards male practitioners in midwifery proves the incorrectness of appealing to them on the sub- ject, and shows, indeed, the trade alacrity with which female prejudice has been cajoled and confirmed on the occasion. 1 his proceeding may be consistently stated as illustrative of the rise and progress of man-midwifery practice, but it can- no. 205. z ' not