Man-Midwife, Male Feminist: The Life and Times of George Macaulay, M.D., Ph.D. (1716-1766)
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Objections to male midwifery; Philip Thicknesse's Polemic Satire
Not surprisingly, other objections to man-midwifery arose in multiple quarters on several grounds. Some objected on the grounds of female modesty. These ranged from a settled preference on the part of some women for female attendance in intimate circumstances to heartfelt objections on religious and moral grounds to male intrusion into the most private of female domains. Other objections particularly arose from women's well-founded fear of the instruments the men used in delivery. Some who objected fanatically accused men-midwives of wholesale seduction of their patients and of salacious liberties with women's breasts and genitalia.
Page 105The most fanatic of the last sort was typified by P. Thicknesse's pamphlet, Man-Midwifery Analysed: and the Tendency of the Practice Detected and Exposed.[10] This pamphlet responded satirically to William Smellie's great 3-volume work on the practice of midwifery that first appeared in 1752. Thicknesse was principally incensed about a male practitioner's handling the female generative and excretory organs on the grounds that doing so cuckolded husbands and debauched wives. But he also blamed men-midwives for their use of surgical instruments: levers, boring scissors, hooks, forceps with the attendant sacrifice of the lives of children and women.
Thicknesse considered the man-midwife an unnatural monster, and he listed 1745 as the year of the monster's birth. This date corresponds to the founding of Westminster Hospital, but also to the year in which the female midwives of London again applied for and failed to obtain an organizational patent that would have institutionalized their profession on the same footing with barbers, surgeons, and other historic guilds—a failure that can principally be attributed to the Royal College of Physicians' self-interested and patriarchal mode of thinking.
In his zeal to condemn man-midwives, Thicknesse told the following probably apocryphal story as true:
A gentleman of the faculty (i.e. a country surgeon, apothecary and man-midwife) being sent for in great haste to deliver a woman, did, as soon as he arrived, in order I suppose to shew his dexterity, by the means of a hook, deliver her instantly from her pain, and the child from a life it could scarcely be said to have entered into: and having so done, took his fee and his leave; but before he had got two miles off, he was pursued and overtaken by the husband, who desired his immediate return, as the pains of this wife were come on again in a more violent manner than ever; but before the husband and doctor got back, she was delivered of another child, by the help only of that excellent, and scarce ever failing female midwife, Page 106Goody Nature! This old Lady, who had practised the art of midwifery in every corner of the globe, for many generations, with amazing success; was, about fifty years ago, stifled in France between two featherbeds, by Messrs. Doctor La Motte and Mauriceau: and no sooner was the good old lady interred, than these, and many other male impostors in that fantastical country, endeavoured to intrude themselves on the public as her legitimate sons; nay, to be able by their art, and with the help of hooks, crotchets, fillets, forceps, and scissars [sic], to surpass the good old lady. (2-3)
La Motte and Mauriceau wrote notable treatises on midwifery. Smellie modeled his reference on that of La Motte, and Mauriceau wrote of the diseases of women.[11] The male writers of the anti-man-midwife party blame the French for founding of the movement. This view, as we shall see below, was also shared by female practitioners of the art.
Both Thicknesse's satirical tone and his (probably fictive) illustration found reasonable grounds in the practices and attitudes of the worst of the male midwives. Thicknesse's reading of Smellie's text, which had had the benefit of Tobias Smollett's editing, suggests, however, a high degree of prurient projection into a physician's manual examination of a woman to determine pregnancy and the degree of its advancement. Based on Smellie's instructions for conducting such an examination, Thicknesse imagined as habitual a seduction in which he takes on a first person, physician-roué's persona. "The touch" to which he alludes involves palpation of the rectum and genitals. His man-midwife imagines a home call and examination:
Upon my arrival, if her husband happens to be present, he must retire; for I know too well, the pain that he must feel, on hearing even the first necessary question: Therefore nothing but an affected, stiff air, a grave face peeping Page 107out of a profound wig, and my hand kept warm in my muff, must transpire, till the husband is gone out of the room; and from that instant, the dressing-room becomes sacred to me and my patient. I then proceed to ask such questions, with an air of gravity and importance, that must confound a woman of modesty beyond imagination: upon perceiving her embarrassment, I get up, take her by the hand, and tell her how very unlike her conduct is to my lady Lucy Likeit, whom I have just left; that her ladyship thought she was with child, but that I could perceive no circle around her nipples, [cf. Smellie], nor by the touch had I any reason to believe she was breeding: This reconciles my new patient; she hears, and wonders at lady Lucy's conduct; but believing it no more than is common, and that the Doctor has a licence to take, and she to grant these liberties, she acquiesces. I then proceed to examine her breasts, nipples, &c. by which I am soon able to discover, what further liberties I may proceed to, under the sanction of my great wig, and my grave face; and if once admitted to the touch, all difficulties for five or six months after, are removed; my patient and I understand one another; secrecy is the word; my character, and her honour seal it.
If men-midwives under these circumstances stand unmoved, they are a part of the human species I am a stranger to! Suppose then, for it is no more than natural to suppose it, that I should, after the Touch, offer some further liberty, (a more indelicate liberty I cannot offer) suppose then, I say, my patient should fly out, and ask me what I mean by such insolent and unwarrantable conduct? and go towards the Bell, in order to call her husband and servants: what must be done? why, step in between her and the bell, drop on my knees, and implore her pardon; telling her that my profession does not emas- Page 108culate me; that my own, and my family's bread, depends upon my character in my profession; that I never was so unfortunately overcome upon any former occasion; that what had happened, was more my misfortune than my fault; and that I must have been more or less than man; to have stood unmoved, on such an occasion with such a woman. Here is a full and certain pardon obtained; for a sensible woman would be too wise to tell her husband, and a foolish woman too vain. (9)
