Man-Midwife, Male Feminist: The Life and Times of George Macaulay, M.D., Ph.D. (1716-1766)
Skip other details (including permanent urls, DOI, citation information): This work is protected by copyright and may be linked to without seeking permission. Permission must be received for subsequent distribution in print or electronically. Please contact [email protected] for more information.
For more information, read Michigan Publishing's access and usage policy.
The Midwifery Debate Versus Midwifery Practice
Though feelings on both sides of the midwifery issue ran high, and though much invective both in print and in conversation was exchanged on both sides of the issue, the case books of physicians make clear that responsible persons, both male and female, both midwife and surgeon, in practice relied on one another to assist women in labor, to deliver the infants, and to preserve the health and lives of both mother and child, if possible. If that was not possible, if a choice had to be made, then saving the mother took precedence. To those ends, in fact, midwives like Nihell and obstetrical physicians like Macaulay, William Hunter, William Smellie and Christopher Kelly cooperated effectively within their capacities and to the degree that the science of their day allowed.
The Critical Review, edited at this date by Tobias Smollett and a company of anonymous reviewers, predictably savaged Nihell's book. Smollett was himself a physician. George Macaulay, though sympathetic with some of Nihell's positions, was also intimately connected with the Review, as we shall later see. William Smellie was a close friend of both men, and all were Scots.[20] The reviewer suggests that Mrs. Nihell take as her motto: "Nihilo ex nihil fit" (A recondite pun: Nothing can be made from nothing, and [Mrs.] Nihell can do nothing). Then for the next ten pages, he trashes everything she says. Page 143The combativeness of the reviewer's stance suggests that Smollett, who was renowned for his temper and bellicosity, may well have written this review himself. He faults Nihell's style:
We must own, however, we have seldom known so much crepitation in a nurse's lecture, except when she had made too free with the caudle, and mixed some extraneous ingredients in the composition for the expulsion of wind. As we cannot, in charity, suppose this was the case with Mrs. Nihell, or her husband, we cannot help conjecturing, that this good gentlewoman has employed some eructatious disciple of Paracelsus Bombast, to inflate her stile, and bouncify her expressions. (Critical Review 87)
We need not detail the sustained invective with which the reviewer treats the work. He suggests Nihell is ignorant, mistaken, verbose, self-interested, sexist, a threat to charitable institutions and unworthy of attention. Despite the reviewer's unflagging scorn, however, Nihell's suggestion that the doctors share their anatomical knowledge with the female midwives with a view to improving patient care reflects a position with which George Macaulay fully agreed. When, shortly after his arrival on staff, the British Lying-in Hospital became a teaching hospital and established a program to instruct midwives, only female students were accepted into the program. The sensitivity to female capacities and opinion that Macaulay elsewhere evinced was once again apparent in this decision. It may also reveal a tacit agreement with Nihell's concern that too many ill-trained men were taking up the art of midwifery.
