practical understanding of one of the most important and complicate functions, of which our system is the seat, without any acquaintance with the general laws and principles of action by which it is carried on?
  No part of the profession can be practised without an acquaintance with every other part. The surgeon must be a physician, the oculist must be a physician, the accoucheur must be a physician; he must understand the general principles of medical practice, or he cannot be considered adequate to the treatment of the simplest case of labour; for circumstances occur, which not only require other assistance than that of nature, but which cannot be even ascertained to exist, except by a medical practitioner.
  And this is perhaps the strongest objection to the employment of female accoucheurs, that we cannot expect them to be possessed of this essential part of their education. It is needless to go on to prove this; it is obvious that we cannot instruct women as we do men in the science of medicine; we cannot carry them into the dissecting room and the hospital; many of our more delicate feelings, much of our refined sensibility must be subdued, before we can submit to the sort of discipline required in the study of medicine; in females they must be destroyed; and I venture to say that a female could scarce pass through the course of education requisite to prepare her, as she ought to be prepared, for the practice of midwifery, without destroying those moral qualities of character, which are essential to the office.
  It would be easy, were it not for a desire to avoid entering into any professional details on the present