| viii |
P R E F A C E. |
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ral aptitude, it is no more than practical truth warrants, and the throwing
a due light into the matter of comparison requires. Yet I do not wish,
that we should pass for any thing beyond what we really are. All the partiality,
all the tender feelings it is so natural for me to have for the sufferings
of my own sex, would be sufficient to with-hold me from desiring to establish
any opinion or practice tending to endanger the personal safety of women
in child-birth, or of any thing so dear to them as their children. I am
myself a mother.
I OWN however there are but too few midwives who
are sufficiently mistresses in their profession. In this they are some of
them but too near upon a level with the men-midwives, with this difference
however in favor of the female practitioners, that they are incapable of
doing so much actual mischief as the male-ones, oftenest more ignorant than
themselves, but who with less tenderness and more rashness go to work with
their instruments, where the skill and management of a good midwife |
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| would |
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