Man-midwifery exposed, or the danger and immorality of employing men in midwifery proved and the remedy for the evil found : addressed to the Society for the Suppression of Vice. / By John Stevens.

John Stevens

Date:: [1866]

Credit: Man-midwifery exposed, or the danger and immorality of employing men in midwifery proved and the remedy for the evil found : addressed to the Society for the Suppression of Vice. / By John Stevens. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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$the child ; and another, in whioTi the child's under jaw had heen cut to the bone by the force of pulling.—Edinburgh Prac, p. 223. I -was employed in a case where, by using groat force, in order to save both mother and child, the os uteri was torn, the woman died soon after, from loss of blood, as I then imagined, proceeding from torn vessels of the uterus. —Bid., p. 316. Some of tlie advantages of using forceps are illustrated in the case recorded by Dr. Dewees, p. 283. Dr. Denman, more perhaps than any other man, is chargeable with perpe- tuating errors in the use of forceps, because he is considered the highest British authority upon the subject. In his attempt at precision, he has created confusion ; and, in his desire to generalize, he has made so many exceptions, that his aphorisms are no longer rules. Really, -what has Dr. Denman written tliat is so very displeasing to the professor in Philadelpliia ? Just hear the charge:— His aversion to instruments, made him restrict their power, to such narrow limits, as to render them scarcely subservient to the art; and ho reduced the cases proper for their application to so few, and so peculiar, that they are scarcely to be met with.—pp. 284-85. Here is the rub :—This learned professor would soon be out of business, if the ladies in the United States knew that the cases that call for the use of instruments are so few and so peculiar, as scarcely to be met with. American obstetricians are deter- mined to make the people believe that it is necessary for them to examine and finger over every case, for fear that it should be difficult, when not one in a thousand ever needs their assistance. Dr. Denman, as well as every other high-minded and benevolent man, has come very near the truth; but, alas ! his opinions must be opposed and condemned, lest they should become known to the discerning people of this republic, and our famous accoucheurs should be compelled to seek a Living in some other way. But again, says Dewees, p. 288— Dr. Osborn carries his reluctance to the use of forceps still fm-ther than Dr. Denman, but he has not done equal mischief, because his authority was not equal. I was once called upon to determine whether anything could be done for a newly-born child, which had been most imskilfuly'' [but scientifically, and by a regular M.D.] delivered by the forceps. The frontal bone was severe- ly indented by the edge of the forceps, and one eye entirely destroyed, by the extremity of the blade being fixed upon it; yet it was bom alive. The case was, of course, a hopeless one : and the child fortunately died in a few hours after its birth. I was once shown a blade of the forceps which had been ex- cessively bent by an endeavour to make it lock. In this case the forceps were exbibited in truimph [by whom ? Oh, a scientific ]\I.D.] as a proof of the great difficulty the operators had to encounter in efiecting the delivery; and, as an additional evidence of this, he declared that no strength was sufiicientto deliver the head, as both his [and he was a powerful man] and that of another practitioner [equally ignorant] were unavailingly exerted, alternately and collectively. He, at last, delivered her with the crochet, after having ex- perienced great difficulty in withdrawing the bent blade of the forceps. I have seen the whole length, or nearly the whole length, of the frontal bono cut through by one of the sharp edges of the foj-ceps, by an effort to compress it; and, in another instance, I have seen the parietal bone in the same wretched case.—Dewees, pp. 203-94. •'I was once called to a poor woman who had had a considerable portion of$