Reply to Mr. Atkinson on the obstetric practice / by Dr. Kinglake.

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

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reply to Mr. Atkinson on the obstetric practice / by Dr. Kinglake. 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.

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    £90 Dr. Kinglalce on the Obstetric Practice precipitates its fanciful possessor on notions and conclusions that but rarely abide the test of correct inquiry. If due limits be not imposed on the theorist, he will substitute his own hypothesis for realities, and will go on to state and defend them as so many axiomatic truths. Much of this sort of factitiousness pervades the reasoning and persuasions of the ■more determined obstetricians of the day. If an objection be made to the popular views of the subject of their art, a report table is cited, in which the inadequacies of nature are exhibited in frightful and crying instances, and the oppo- nents of such groundless-estimates is contumaciously branded with epithets that savour the reverse of every thing like true 'science. Mr. Atkinson authorizes the correctness of his strictures on the objection which I have thought proper to adduce against indiscriminate man-midwifery, by observing that the practice is safe in the hands of men of science and humanity. With due deference to men of undoubted science, I feel war- ranted in averring, that the most reprehensible errors that have been committed within my knowledge in midwifery practice, have been by those who had been the most solici- tous candidates for being accredited as persons of superior science; whilst the simple, the modest, and the unassuming practitioner, has had the good fortune to meet with but few or no cases requiring scientific aid, and has deservedly ac- quired and enjoyed the reputation of being the most success- ful in midwifery practice. Perhaps Mr. Atkinson may say,, that such practitioners did not understand the difficult cases that must have presented to them.—Be it so, but Nature did; and seasonably afforded all the relief that was necessary. 'I. have now strongly in my reference several man-midwifery practitioners, not less respectable than aged, who have been,, as formerly asserted, in full employ, from thirty to fifty years, and have never had an occasion to use an instrument, and who have’merited the confidence and preference of their patients by the distinguished safety and advantage of their practice. There has been, indeed, none of the new-fangled eclat at- tached to the reputation of bad cases requiring and receiving scientific and manual aid ; but there has been the more solid satisfaction of humanely, patiently, and safely attending the 'undisturbed progress of natural parturition. I know nothing of Mr. Atkinson’s science, nor to what length, or under what circumstances, his zeal for the obstetric art would induce him to interpose his erudite skill, but the following sentence makes it obvious that he does not super- abound with the sensibilities worthy of a cultivated and a correct mind. Emboldened by what he' calls Mr. Hey’s statement*