profoundly skilled operator and not of merely a common man-midwife.
RUN over all the authors who
have written on this matter, and you will find that the men-midwives,
for want of right, and of true knowledge of the profession, have introduced
themselves by force and violence, as one may say, sword in hand, with
those murderous instruments : read the antients, it will appear, that
they cut their way in, with iron and steel, fore-runners of murders. Our
moderns to palliate these violences and injustices, agree on one hand,
that the common and gentlest methods are to be preferred : but, on the
other hand, when you tell them, that the common and gentlest methods are
the hands of women, who ought therefore to be preferred to the men, and
to be restored to their antient and rightful possession : then you will
see the whole pack open in full cry : to arms! to arms! is the word :
and what are those arms by which they maintain themselves, but those instruments,
those weapons of death! would not one imagine, that the art of midwifery
was an art-military?
