On midwives and accoucheurs / by Joseph Adams.

  • Adams, Joseph, 1756-1818.
Date:
[between 1810 and 1819]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On midwives and accoucheurs / by Joseph Adams. 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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    For the London Medical and Physical Journal. On Midwives and Accoucheurs; by Joseph Adams, M.D. r HAVE been much interested in the controversy of some if* of your learned correspondents concerning the obstetric it, and shall feel obliged by your admitting a few loose loughts on the subject, if not inconsistent with the plan of our Journal. I would first remark, not only that accoucheurs are of re- ?nt origin, but that no language with which I am acquainted as a primitive word for a male practitioner in that art. 'he Hebrew midwives were all female, as far as we may ldge by the sacred text. In Greek, we find Hippocrates uninizing an old fashioned word applied to a healer, and i /en to a botcher; and other writers using a term as often ii: oplied to the nurse. The noun obstetrix, in Latin, has, I ffieve, no masculine. In modern languages, the Germans is ave two expressions, both of which seem to refer to labour- ains or groanings, and both are feminine. The Italians ive dropped the old Latin term, and use commere, which indifferently applied to a nurse or gossip attending at lose periods. The Portuguese and Spaniards, who, next to : le Italians, retain most of the original Latin, have commadre, sed in the same senses, and also as a god-mother. They jjc ave, indeed, the term medico, or chirurgeon-parteiro, but lese are evidently of modern invention, from par tire, or j ie Latin partum supine of pareo. d The proper French term is sage femme, so called, not i lly on account of her supposed knowledge, but because she R empowered, in cases of necessity, to baptize. For this k urpose, she does not always wait for the birth of the child; il ut if the labour is lingering, and on that account likely to a rove fatal to the infant, it is, in many parts of the conti- f ent, baptized by dipping the midwives finger into water, ■ hich is brought into contact with any part of the child: It ie woman then pronounces In nomine patris, &c. con- 1 luding by proclaiming “ The child is baptized.” Of late l ears the French have adopted the word accoucheur, or chi- r nrgien accoucheur, to signify the office when conducted p y men. I am not sufficiently acquainted with the Anglo-Saxon to i ^certain whether gossip was among them the only term for p lose who exercised that office, and afterwards midwife t» dded, to distinguish that lady from the other attendants, he latter term, however, seems plainly to show to which ex it was confined ; and, if I am right, can there be a greater * bsurdity than to talk of a man-midwife? But our term | '/mg-in, or, according to modern delicacy, confinement, is rj 1 suited to form into a substantive: hence we have been £ uder the necessity of using the French word accoucheur. Irom what has been said, I conceive, it will not be ques- k oned that the introduction of accoucheurs is of modern . af<*, probably first begun by the French, who, it must I be