Medical women; a thesis and a history.

  • Sophia Jex-Blake
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical women; a thesis and a history. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    great agonies most women suffer at the very sight of a man would be almost entirely prevented, and great expense and much life saved. However, we must suppose that these noble words of protest fell upon deaf ears, and the midwives being left in their ignorance, their practice gradually passed into the hands of the medical men, who had every advantage of learning; at their command.1 It is, however, only very recently that men-midwives have been allowed to attend on royal patients in this country ; indeed, I believe that the Princess Charlotte was the first to establish the precedent, and that our present Sovereign was the first queen who followed it. In addition to the midwives already mentioned as attendant on royalty, we have also Alice Dennis, who attended Anne of Denmark, and received a fee of £100 for her pains and attendance upon the Queen, as of His Hisdmess's free gift and reward, without account, imprest, or other charge to be set on her for the same. We learn also that Margaret Mercer was sent express from England in 1603 to attend on His Majesty's dearest daughter, the Princess Electress Palatine. It is also recorded that Mrs. Labany attended Mary ] It may be interesting to give the following quotation on this subject from a popular magazine of forty years ago :— The accoucheur's is a profession nearly altogether wrested out of the hands of women, for which Nature has surely fitted them, if opinion permitted education to finish Nature's work. But women are held in the bonds of ignorance, and then pronounced of deficient capacity, or blamed for wanting the knowledge they are sternly prevented from acquiring. — Tail's Magazine, June 1841.