DoHistoryArchivesite maptech helpabout sitesearch

A Treatise on the Art of Midwifery, Setting Forth Various Abuses Therein, Especially as to the Practice with Instruments
Nihell, Elizabeth
1760
Published by Printed for A. Morley, London
Location of original: Countway Rare Books, Harvard University
 
View thumbnails of the 58 pages in this document
 
View Image
View Image
 
<

Page 68

>

68 A  T R E A T I S E  

rather make a better figure than the men, Midwifery seems their appropriate lot : and rather a gift than an acquisition. They hold from nature herself, in this matter, a certain expertness and dexterity, to which not all the more abstruse refinement of art can ever conduct the men. Nor will the operation of iron and steel instruments ever equal the suppleness, safety and effectual ministry of the fingers of an expert midwife, who understands her business.

   LET me then be permitted to ask retortingly in my turn, What is, at the best, a man-midwife? Is not he one of a new set of operators unknown to our ancestors? A creature in short hard to be defined? In no original or primitive language is there so much as a word to express one of this profession. The common word for him in the English language is a contradiction in terms, a monstrous incongruity ; a MAN-mid-WIFE. Sensible of the ridiculous sound of this expression, scarcely less so than that of a woman-coach-man, they have, by way of remedy, borrowed the term of accoucheur from that nation whence the fashion

  was
<   >

 Title page   Dedication page i   Dedication page ii   Dedication page iii   Dedication page iv 
 Preface page i   Preface page ii   Preface page iii   Preface page iv   Preface page v 
 Preface page vi   Preface page vii   Preface page viii   Preface page ix   Preface page x 
 Preface page xi   Preface page xii   Preface page xiii   Preface page xiv   Preface page xv 
 Preface page xvi   Contents page i   Contents page ii   Contents page iii   Contents page iv 
 Contents page v   Contents page vi   Page 31   Page 32   Page 33 
 Page 34   Page 35   Page 36   Page 37   Page 38 
 Page 39   Page 52   Page 53   Page 54   Page 55 
 Page 56   Page 57   Page 58   Page 59   Page 60 
 Page 61   Page 62   Page 63   Page 64   Page 65 
 Page 66   Page 67   Page 68   Page 69   Page 70 
 Page 71   Page 72   Page 73 




home your interests who was Martha? Martha's diary book film doing history archive on your own