Hints to Husbands Part 1

Hints to Husbands.

by George Morant.

PREFACE.

The two-fold object which we desire to attain in the following pages, and to which we earnestly entreat the attention of our readers, is the exposure and amendment of a vast social evil, which we have reason to believe has, to most reflecting men, become well nigh intolerable. It will be obvious that to bring this evil, with effect, to the bar of public opinion, we must probe it to the very core, and fearlessly unveil and drag into the light its indecent mysteries. In so doing we shall doubtless incur the censures of those easy-going people who agree with the poet that--

"Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise;"

who, like the bird of the desert, by hiding their heads deem their bodies out of danger; who, dead to all the generous sympathies which elevate man above the brute, would reduce the minds of others to their own dull and dreary level of stolid inanity; of those prudent persons who, closing their eyes to the lightning flash and their ears to the vollied thunder, sneak through the world by any side-path sooner than encounter a difficulty foot to foot and hand to hand; and, without pretending to any extraordinary knowledge of the human heart, we fear, of the majority of those women who have already sacrificed their modesty at the altar of custom; and, above all, of that cla.s.s whose presumptuous charlatanism we desire to lay bare. But for all this we care not one jot, provided the mists of imposture be dispelled, and our countrywomen rescued from the disgrace and degradation of an odious system, which, originating in a dissolute age, has since been promoted and encouraged by self-interested empirics, and sanctioned by indifference, credulity, and error.

HINTS TO HUSBANDS, &c. &c.

CHAPTER I.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

The practice of _man_-midwifery is one among the noxious weeds which the rank luxuriance of civilization has produced, and since its introduction it has thriven with unrestrained vitality and ever-increasing strength, until at length it spreads its Upas shadow far and wide over our land, and treacherously, mysteriously, and silently distils the poison of its presence deep into the sanctuaries of domestic life. Reader, we will make plain to you the nature and polluting influence of this redundant growth of luxury and vice; and then, with G.o.d's help, may you, and tens of thousands of your fellow-men, swear by all things holy, just, and good, that the hallowed purity of home shall never more be blighted by its deadly shade.

We are accustomed to speak of ourselves as of a highly moral people; and of our manners, habits, and customs as superior to those of other nations; and of our capital as the most civilized city in the world;

"But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of mind, When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman's ware or his word?

When the poor are hovell'd and hustled together, each s.e.x like swine, When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie; When chalk, and alum, and plaster are sold to the poor for bread, And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life.

And sleep must lie down armed, for the villanous centre-bits Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights.

While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps as he sits, To pestle a poison'd poison behind his crimsoned lights."

Oh, but, say you, these are not flaws in the crystal, but mere specks upon the mirror, which a little careful polis.h.i.+ng may remove with ease. See the propriety, order, and decency of our households; our n.o.ble sense of justice, right, and honour; our strict observance of religious duties; the chaste and modest demeanour of our women; and beholding these things, who shall say that we are not a moral people?

To the unreflecting and casual observer, mere outward semblance would appear to justify and confirm this character of our society. Nevertheless there is, beneath the surface of this seeming health, a loathsome canker, eating into the very vitals of home life![1] and we ourselves are sapping the very foundations of morality, and insulting and outraging the most precious feelings of those whom we should love best and cherish most upon earth, by subjecting them to a usage which first robs them of their birthright, modesty, and then deadens, and finally destroys, all perception of their loss; while "moral England," under the delusion of a falsely termed necessity, endures, and even fosters a pollution, which France, to her honour, now repudiates and abhors!

Believing it to be a fact that ninety-nine men in every hundred are ignorant of the extent of the outrages to which their wives submit, when "attended" by a _man_-midwife in their "confinements," we shall, in this essay, endeavour to clear up the mystery which envelopes the proceedings of this cla.s.s of pract.i.tioners, showing by extracts from their own treatises what their "process" is; and having afterwards placed before our readers the opinions and arguments of able and scientific men against such an utter subversion of propriety, we shall, with confidence in the result, leave the question to be decided by the strong voice of public opinion whether this pernicious custom, indecent and degrading as all will admit it to be, shall longer disgrace our country.

The spirit of evil, though not, as in Eden,

"Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, a.s.saying by his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy,"

yet, under another shape, was still at his old work at the time when,[2]

instead of the ordinary midwife, whose presence would have given rise to scandal, a surgeon[3] was summoned to attend the delivery of Mademoiselle de la Valiere, mistress of Louis XIV., for so powerful was the effect of fas.h.i.+on in these dissolute times, that, soon after the first examples had been given by persons whose rank and condition enabled them to brave public opinion, the Parisian ladies of fas.h.i.+on, throwing aside the veil of modesty, which had from the earliest ages, and in all countries, enjoined female attendance, followed the precedent of this abandoned woman, and the practice of _man_-midwifery soon became general in the French capital.

The historian well and truly describes the state of society in those evil days, and how the manners of the age became, year by year, more lost to virtue, dignity, and honour, until at length all the better feelings of human nature, even religion itself, became a by-word and a mockery amidst the chaos of the Revolution. "The ante-chambers of Versailles were daily besieged by crowds of t.i.tled, yet needy supplicants, who eagerly sought employment, favour, or distinction from the king's ministers or his mistresses, and mandates issued from them were obeyed without a murmur from Calais to the Pyrenees. What, then, was it which, in a country so profusely endowed with the riches of nature, and inhabited by a race of men so brave, so active, and so enterprising, has led to a convulsion attended with the unspeakable horrors of the French Revolution? The answer is to be found in the previous state of the country, and the general perversion of the national mind; in the oppressions to which the people were subjected, the vices by which the n.o.bles alienated them; the corruptions by which morals were contaminated; the errors with which religion was disfigured; the extent to which infidelity had spread."[4]

"Corruption, in its worst form, had long tainted the manners of the court as well as the n.o.bility, and poisoned the sources of influence. The favour of royal mistresses, or the intrigues of the court, openly disposed of the highest appointments, both in the army, the church, and the civil service.

Since the reign of the Roman emperors, profligacy had never been conducted in so open and undisguised a manner as under Louis XV. and the Regent Orleans. From the secret memoirs of the period, which have now been published, it is manifest that the licentious novels, which at that time disgraced French literature, conveyed a faithful picture of the manners of the age."[5]

"It is difficult to treat of this subject (times of Louis XV.) without disclosing particulars at which purity may blush, or on which licentiousness may gloat; but general observations make little impression on the mind even of the most reflecting reader, if not attended with a detail of facts which proves that it is well founded; and one authentic example of the manner of the court and aristocratic circles in Paris, anterior to the Revolution, will produce a stronger conviction than whole chapters of a.s.sertion. All that we read in ancient historians, veiled in the decent obscurity of a learned language, of the orgies of the ancient Babylon, was equalled, if not exceeded, by the nocturnal revels of the Regent Orleans, the Cardinal Dubois, and his other licentious a.s.sociates."[6] Such is a faithful picture of the manners and vices of the age and country in which the custom of man-midwifery took its rise. Here and there a bright star shone out, the brighter for the blackness of that hideous night: men of the highest order of mind did all that great eloquence and vigorous thought could do to stay the strong and turbid current of pollution which threatened to overwhelm the human race, and amongst these great spirits of the past, the physician Roussel, in a work remarkable for the delicacy of its sentiments, the force of its satire, and the strength and power of its language, endeavoured to turn the attention of his countrymen to the indecency of the practice which was first adopted in the harlot De la Valiere's chamber.[7] In some measure he succeeded; but who can wonder if, in that vicious age, his eloquence had pa.s.sed unheeded, and the delicacy of his sentiments had been scoffed at and derided by the charlatans of the day, in a city where adultery was the fas.h.i.+on, and marriage but a cloak for vice. The causes which then prevented the writings and counsels of these eminent men from taking full effect upon the public mind, no longer exist; and, accordingly, in that very Paris, where, in former times, amidst such scenes of vice and profligacy as the historian describes, the immodest practice originated, has since sprung up an agitation against it, which is increasing day by day. Colleges, both metropolitan and provincial, have long been established for the instruction of _females_ in the obstetric "art," and many of those women, who have been educated in them, possessed such talents and intelligence that the treatises written by them have become the acknowledged text books of the French medical world.

Madame Boivin[8] in the dedication of her "Memorial de l'Art des Accouchements," 4me ed., says:--"Moved and affected by the painful cries which mothers, victims of barbarity and ignorance, caused to be heard from far, the Government hastened to reply to them by establis.h.i.+ng a practical School of Midwifery within the Lying-in Hospital: from all parts were summoned, _not men but women_, to come and a.s.sist at the lectures of the most eminent professors of surgery and medicine.... Already a great number have, from this fertile source of instruction, derived the knowledge and the qualities necessary for the exercise of an art so important in its results to the population of the kingdom and the happiness of families." In the preface to the above treatise, 4me ed., p.

10, we read the following allusion to the practice on this side the channel; "Thus you will find in this edition some novel remarks ... on certain cases of difficult labour, and on the operative process practised in these cases, so brutally treated by pract.i.tioners beyond sea, and in a manner so simple and so happily different by us, especially at the School of Midwifery in Paris."

And what are we about in "moral England," all this time? Where are our colleges of instruction, to which we have summoned "_not men but women_"--our _Hospices de la Maternite_,[9] wherein and whereby we may preserve the modesty of our women? Where is the voice to cry shame upon the custom which introduces men into the sacred precincts of the marriage chamber to perform offices which are, by nature, the duty of women alone?[10] Shall it be said that two thousand years ago the Romans possessed a higher sense of moral feeling than we do now? Roussel says, "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.

This was an object to which ancient Governments had always special regard.

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 doctors 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,[11] 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 boon by a forgetfulness of the first of all decencies."[12]

"The Greeks," says Dr. Stevens, "invariably employed women; Phanarete, the mother of that distinguished man, Socrates, was a midwife. Hippocrates makes mention of them; and Plato speaks somewhat extensively of midwives, and explains their duties." "We have reason to believe," says Dr. Denman, "that the obstetric art was altogether in the hands of women, _the natural delicacy of females having reluctant recourse to the professional aid of the other s.e.x_."

Hecquet says, "The Greeks, moreover, had their female physicians, as we perceive by the words [Greek: akestrides] and [Greek: eatrinai], which have been preserved to us."

"Such was the chasteness of the times, that lithotomy on the female subject was practised by one of their own s.e.x. At Athens the positive enactments of the land were inefficient to overcome their scrupulous modesty. It is said the Athenian doctors procured a legal enactment transferring the practice of midwifery to themselves; but at the very attempt the women rose _en ma.s.se_, and declared _they would die rather than submit to such an outrage_ upon common decency.... The Romans[13]

also employed women only. Pliny, in his _Natural History_, speaks of midwives,[14] explains their duties, and mentions some of great reputation. According to Roman law, midwives were recognized as a distinct cla.s.s in society, and enjoyed certain rights and immunities in common with the medical profession."[15]

We have shown, on the testimony of medical writers, that the practice of _man_-midwifery was introduced in France, or rather in Paris, for it was never generally adopted in the provinces,[16] so early as the end of the seventeenth century; but more than a hundred years elapsed before the unnatural and debasing custom became fas.h.i.+onable in England: and we find that late in the eighteenth century it was considered so objectionable, that few persons, excepting in those rare cases where danger was imminent, ever permitted "a medical man" to usurp the duties of the midwife: and it is only within the last fifty years that _man_-midwifery has prevailed in these kingdoms. Indeed Dr. Ramsbotham, in 1845, in the preface to his work on obstetric medicine and surgery, alludes to the difficulty which it would appear had not even then been entirely got rid of, in overcoming the very natural aversion of women to the regulations of midwifery practice as laid down in the many swollen and prurient treatises on the "pretended art."

Nothing appears more extraordinary, or more opposed to all our preconceived notions of propriety, than that this _man_ should bustle into the marriage chamber, our holy of holies, with so much privileged a.s.surance, and that the world should look upon the affair with such perfect indifference. But we suppose that his presence is a necessary evil, and the whole proceeding quite a matter of course, in which "sensible people" see no harm whatever; _honi soit qui mal y pense_. Some such train of ideas may have been suggested by the arrival of Dr. A. B. or C., M.D. and accoucheur, whom you, perhaps, still young in the world's ways, have summoned, you know not why, but that you had been told, it may be by your wife's mother, that it was absolutely necessary to engage a fas.h.i.+onable "ladies' doctor" to "attend" your first born's introduction into the world; in fact, you began to have grave doubts whether it would be possible for the child to arrive without the doctor; (you may have since ascertained, much to the chagrin of A. B. or C., M.D. and accoucheur, that such an event is not altogether beyond the circle of probabilities.) You have also hired a "month nurse," _recommended by the doctor_ as an experienced and skilful woman, in every way fitted for her office. The critical moment approaches; in a state of nervous excitement and anxiety you are advised to retire to the drawing-room, which, like a fool, you do. From time to time you are a.s.sured that all is going on as well as possible, and at length you are gratified by the intelligence that you are a father. You are, of course, utterly ignorant of all that has been done, what the nurse's share of duty may have been, and what the doctor's, although you have perchance a sort of vague and undefined suspicion that you were wrong in leaving all that you held dearest in the hands of a stranger, and that stranger a _man_, at a moment when she, the loved one, required your presence to comfort, console, and strengthen her in the hour of trial. Nor would your ignorance be enlightened, unless, as we did after years of credulity and miserable evasion, you catechise the doctor. Then will break upon you, in all their horrible reality, the indignities to which you have subjected her for whom you would have given life itself, the purest of the pure, the idol of your love, the very essence of your being, your heart of hearts! Then, indeed, will you repent, when it is all too late, your folly in trusting to the candour of Dr. A. B. or C., M.D., and the actual crime which you have committed in not acquainting yourself, _while there was yet time to prevent it_, with the "process" by which the _man_-midwife pretends to improve upon the all-powerful machinery of nature, and the infinite wisdom of nature's G.o.d.

In the bitterness of your thoughts you may, perhaps, venture to question the doctor's mode of proceeding, upon the supposition that the nurse, having been recommended by him as a skilful and competent person, should alone have _actively_[17] interfered, when you may be truculently told that he was not there "only to stand by and make reports;" or that "an accoucheur is not necessarily an old woman;" that "there are no feelings;"[18] that "the first thing he always does, when he comes to the bed-side, is to make _an examination per v.a.g.i.n.am_!" with other observations equally harrowing to the sensibilities of a husband.

What shock so terrible to a man who, rejoicing in the delightful sentiment of a wife's purity, discovers that all he held dearest and most sacred, all which he would s.h.i.+eld from profanation with the last drop of his life's blood, has been invaded by the presence, and _violated by the actual contact_ of the _man_-midwife? The doctor may be a sober, discreet, oily man, of staid appearance, and a very pattern of propriety; or he may be a vulgar, low-bred person, in his leisure consorting with those of a similar bent; or

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

or he may be a tippling, jovial fellow, who at some roystering party is always called on for "a good song," sure to have as its theme wine, love, and woman,--for accoucheurs are mortals like other men; or he may be some tyro in "the art," just let loose from his course of walking the hospitals, strong in syphilitic cases, and with all the recollections of a young surgeon's life fresh upon him: nevertheless, whatever he be, _the very inmost secrets of your wife's person_ are known to him,[19] the veil of modesty has been rudely torn aside, and the sanct.i.ty of marriage exists but in the name.

----"Such an act, That blurs the grace and blush of modesty; Calls virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love, And sets a blister there; makes marriage vows As false as dicer's oaths: oh, such a deed, As from the body of contraction plucks The very soul, and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow; Yea this solidity and compound ma.s.s, With tristful visage as against the doom, Is thought-sick at the act."

CHAPTER II.

"O shame! where is thy blush?"

It now becomes our most painful but necessary task to explain what that "process" is to which we have alluded, by giving some extracts from one of the princ.i.p.al works on midwifery, and in the very words of the treatise, to prove the gross outrages to which women are obliged to submit when "attended" by these male pract.i.tioners. Nothing but a sense of the enormity of this monster evil would induce us to contaminate our pages by the introduction of such garbage; but we are well aware that "general observations make little impression on the mind even of the most reflecting reader, if not attended with a detail of facts which proves that it is well founded; and one authentic example will produce a stronger conviction than whole chapters of a.s.sertion."

EXTRACTS FROM DR. RAMSBOTHAM'S OBSTETRIC MEDICINE AND SURGERY.

"_Duties of the Medical Attendant under Natural Labour._

"From the knowledge which the foregoing pages will afford of the beneficence displayed by nature throughout the processes of utero-gestation and labour, and of the admirable contrivances adopted by her to overcome difficulties and avert dangers, it will be evident that, in a very large proportion of cases, the duties of the obstetrician must be few and simple. Generally, indeed, no _active_ a.s.sistance is necessary, until after the birth of the child; all that is required of the attendant being, that he should remain an observant, though unofficious spectator of the process, ready to exert himself with prompt.i.tude and energy on the first accession of any alarming symptoms, but equally or more ready to allow the changes necessary for the completion of nature's object to proceed, uninterrupted by any meddlesome interference; for no maxim in obstetric science is of more universal application than that unnecessary 'a.s.sistance,' rendered with a view of expediting the termination of the case, or shortening the sufferings of the patient, is not only useless, but in the highest degree injurious, and directly calculated to defeat its own end.