Hints to Husbands Part 2

"I sent another patient to Dr. Robert Lee a few days ago (whom I had never seen) under similar circ.u.mstances, but moving in a different rank of life.

The same opinion was given, the miserable patient suffering dire disappointment!

"I recently attended a poor curate's wife, who had come to London for medical aid, at, as I suppose, great inconvenience. During my short attendance, this patient was constantly urged by a friend, a t.i.tled lady (the aristocracy always take the lead in quackery), to send for her physician, who is a strong abettor of the speculum. The course which followed may be imagined, and need not be described. A case of more complicated misery for a husband cannot well be conceived. A sickly wife, afflicted with uterine hypochondriasis, set upon by a t.i.tled advocate of the uterine quackery, with straitened resources.

"The advocates of the speculum speak of cases which had resisted the efficacy of the usual general and local treatment, and which yielded to the use of the speculum and the caustic. I have seen cases in which, the speculum and caustic having been employed--and unduly employed, as I believe--the patient remained more miserably afflicted in mind and body than ever, and this the effect of that treatment. Whether the former supposition be as well founded as the latter, I will not presume to determine; but I believe the cases in which the young, and especially the unmarried, are afflicted, so as really to justify the use of the speculum, to be rare, and the cases in which the injection of a solution of nitrate of silver, by her own hands, may not take the place of the application of this valuable remedy in substance, by the hand of the pract.i.tioner, to be rare indeed.

"I will not advert even to the epithets which have been applied to the frequent use of the speculum by our French neighbours, who are so skilled in these matters; but I will ask, WHAT FATHER AMONGST US, AFTER THE DETAILS WHICH I HAVE GIVEN, WOULD ALLOW HIS VIRGIN DAUGHTER TO BE SUBJECTED TO THIS 'POLLUTION'? Let us, then, maintain the spotless dignity of our profession, with its well-deserved character for purity of morals, and throw aside this injurious practice with indignant scorn, remembering that it is not mere exposure of the person, but the dulling of the edge of the virgin modesty, and the degradation of the pure minds of the daughters of England, which are to be avoided." _Dr Marshall Hall in the 'Lancet.'_

Dr. d.i.c.kson, an eminent medical reformer, and accomplished surgeon and physician, formerly on the staff, and now, and for many years past, in extensive practice in London, says:--

"But of all the medical quackeries that have sprung up in these times, none can compare with the infamous _speculum_ treatment of certain members of the faculty, who confine their practice princ.i.p.ally to females. No matter what may be the woman's real complaint--a cough, pain of the side, or anything else--she is at once a.s.sured that it proceeds from 'disease of the womb.' A pretended examination must, forsooth, be gone through, which, in every case, is made to confirm the dishonest a.s.surance given in the first instance. The patient is forthwith victimized, week after week, and month after month, with a host of operations, for a disease which, in the beginning, at least, never existed at all, but which is very soon brought on artificially by the horrible appliances of men, who ride in their carriages, by this daily and hourly outrage to the const.i.tutions and the decency of our women."--_The Forbidden Book_, vol. ii. page 195.

Again, in the same work, appears the following letter, under the head of "Obstetric Quackery in Edinburgh:"--"SIR,--The members of the Town Council of Edinburgh are the patrons of the University. Most of them are known to be conscientious men, and keenly alive to all that can affect the honour and the usefulness of the inst.i.tution over which they preside. It appears extraordinary that they should have remained so long unacquainted with the leprosy which has infected some of the professors; or that they should not have summarily driven these persons from the chairs they were polluting, when the fact was discovered.... It is to him (Dr. Simpson) that we chiefly owe the infinitely more dangerous and disgusting quackery in midwifery, which rages like a pestilence in London, and in every town and village throughout the empire, and in some of our most distant colonies.

On the present occasion, it may be sufficient to enumerate the proceedings to which I allude: To Dr. Simpson we owe the invention of the dangerous weapon called the uterine-sound or poker--pessaries which have justly been designated infernal and impaling uterine machines, to cure retroversions which never existed; instruments for pumping the uterus, to excite menstruation; and the proposal to rub its inner surface with lunar caustic, for the same purpose. To him we owe the hysterotome, for slitting open the os uteri, to cure sterility; and to his efforts, more than any other individual, we are indebted for the profligate use of the speculum which has prevailed, and the practice of destroying the os and cervix uteri with caustic potash. To Dr. Simpson we owe the attempt to revive the brutal practice of turning in cases of distortion of the pelvis; of attempting to subst.i.tute the Caesarian operation for the induction of premature labour; to him we owe the attempt to subvert the established practice in placental presentation, by extraordinary statistic tables; and, lastly, we owe to the genius of the Professor of Midwifery in the University of Edinburgh, the baby-sucker! Are these specimens of what the _Edinburgh Monthly Journal_ for this month calls 'the simple treatment taught and practised in Edinburgh, and which, if adopted in London, would reduce many pract.i.tioners from comfort to starvation?' We may well excuse the members of the Town Council if they are not so dexterous in _harliquinade_ as the University Professor.--I am, Sir, your obedient Servant, ISAAC IRONS, M.D. Sept., 1851."

We now proceed to quote the words of "a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons," which appear in a pamphlet ent.i.tled, "The Speculum: its Moral Tendencies." We believe the author to be very well known, both as a writer in the medical periodicals, and as a skilful and accomplished surgeon. He says--"Were fame and fortune, however, the only results, were the public simply gulled, there would be nothing in its consequences to take this imposition out of the ordinary category. But, unfortunately, this is not the case. The practices of these men leave results of a far more serious and lasting character, not to be sought for amongst material things, but in the lowered and loosened state to which it is rapidly bringing the morality of the country.

"This is a strong a.s.sertion, but not stronger than the facts that support it. The profession is well aware of the baleful tendency of the proceedings of these men, whilst they deplore their inability to prevent or to expose them. Scarcely a member of it whom you meet but has a tale to tell of their practices, which, if made public, would bring the mighty from their seats; but there is too much indecency involved in the disclosure to allow of its publicity. Thus are they doubly hedged; _their diploma checks suspicion, whilst the nature of their performances secures them secrecy_.

"To believe in the necessity for this constant and general use of the speculum, is to admit a sad deterioration in nature itself. Either this, or that anterior generations were great sufferers without being aware of it. Perhaps, like the Spartan boy they endured in silence, rather than betray a want of courage, or, what was more laudable, a want of delicacy.

"But I do not believe in this. I believe the workmans.h.i.+p of the Creator to be as perfect now as of yore, and that the modern and mult.i.tudinous disorders attributed to the uterine system are wicked inventions put forth to sanction unnecessary interference. Why, if we are to believe these men, there is scarcely a patient who applies to them that is not suffering from one or the other of these numerous affections. The womb, with them, is so invariably out of order or out of position, that disease and dislocation are more constant than its normal conditions. Young or old, married or single, whatever their age, whatever their condition, the same opinion, the same treatment, varied only in the selection of the instrument. No matter what the complaint, or what the ailment, the _fons et origo mali_ is declared to be the uterus....

"Nor are these practices confined to the high priests in these temples of immorality; faith in their professions now pervades a large portion of female society; like the flame in a stubble field the mania has spread, the convert quickly becomes the proselyte, and the consequence is, that some men, in the general practice of our profession, are induced to shape their treatment less by the nature of the complaints, than the suggestions of their patients....

"The result of this can be easily imagined; unskilfulness is a.s.sociated with fraud. The Speculum is brought into play, and startling are the revelations made by its glittering wall. Alarmed or amused, no matter which, the patient is secured, and remains long enough under treatment to familiarize her with indecency, and to enable the practical hand of the neophyte to attain the _tour de maitre_, both in handling the instrument and the fee....

"Then again, these uterine complaints, contrary to the laws that govern local affections, are made to a.s.sume an almost epidemic character, for it is by no means uncommon to hear that several members of the same household are under treatment, as they call it, at the same time....

"But besides those whom I have mentioned as abusing the Speculum, there are others, who, more honest, yet not less dangerous, are, unconsciously perhaps, contributing their share to this work of demoralization; I mean that portion of the profession who, unable to form opinions for themselves, are ready at all times _jurare in verba magistri_, adopting any practice, provided the example be set in high places.... with these men one would like to deal charitably; but the best of motives must not be allowed to compensate the consequences of dangerous acts; THEY MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO JEOPARDISE THE MODESTY OF THE s.e.x, SO LONG THE PRIDE AND THE PROPERTY OF ENGLAND.

"That an instrument, capable in its application of such wide-spreading mischief, should possess some compensating good, some power whereby diseases, hitherto obscure and intractable, should be compelled to render up the morbid secrets on which they rest, and to take their place amongst curable disorders, was to have been expected, and had this been so, the case would stand far differently....

"But unfortunately this is not the case; the diseases here alluded to, though obnoxious to its application, instead of being benefited are materially aggravated by its use; take, for instance, the scirrhous affections, in these cases its use is not only inefficacious, but positively injurious--it only adds torture to torment....

"Driven, then, from the field of real disease, these advocates of the Speculum are obliged to invest with a false character ailments that the profession has. .h.i.therto regarded as too trifling to admit of any save the simplest treatment.... The Speculum has been greatly extolled as the means of conveying appliances immediately to the parts affected. But it must not be forgotten that the effects of local remedies in const.i.tutional affections are short-lived in the extreme, or that those can hardly be called remedies, that are notoriously so slow in their operation, as to leave it doubtful whether they have not, after all, been robbing time of the merit of the recovery.

"That the profession is silent on these abuses is, in my opinion, to be deplored. Such silence may arise from the fear that the denunciation of them would tend to lower it in the estimation of the public, more than the continuance of the abuses themselves. Yielding to none in the desire to uphold the dignity of my order, I must say that I share in no such apprehensions. The public in return for the confidence they repose in us, have a right to such protection, and if they find that it has been withheld, that, in a mistaken solicitude for our own interests, we have neglected theirs, they will bind us all up in one common withe together, and the diploma, though it may still indicate the man of science, will cease to insure us the position of gentlemen."[32]

The last extract which we shall give appears in the _Lancet_, a periodical whose very t.i.tle is behind the age, indicative of professional bigotry, a record of antiquated fallacy and prejudice. The tide must surely be on the turn, or the exposure of these speculumizing villainies would never have been permitted to grace its columns:--

"On the use of the speculum in the diagnosis and treatment of uterine diseases, by Dr. Robert Lee, the author referred to the tabular statement of 220 cases of real and imaginary disease of the uterus, published in the 38th volume of the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, and presented in a similar tabular form the details (of) eighty additional cases, which had since come under his observation. Of the 300 patients forty-seven were unmarried, one had barely completed her eighteenth year, several were under twenty, and the majority under thirty years of age, and were suffering from hysteria, leucorrhoea, dysmenorrhoea, or some nervous affection of the uterus, without inflammation, ulceration, or any structural disease or displacement of the organ. In Case 256 the patient had been told that the womb was prolapsed and much ulcerated, and an instrument had been introduced for six weeks, with an aggravation of all the symptoms. The hymen was found so perfect on examination that it was impossible to reach the os uteri without using an unjustifiable degree of violence. On the ground of morality, and on every other ground, he could see no defence for the employment of the speculum in these forty-seven cases. Of the 300 patients seventy were barren, and the sterility was not removed, nor the other symptoms relieved in a single instance. SEVERAL OF THESE INDIVIDUALS SPOKE WITH HORROR AND SHAME OF THE TREATMENT TO WHICH THEY HAD BEEN SUBMITTED. A considerable number of the cases were suffering from cancerous disease, in all of which the symptoms seemed to have been aggravated by the treatment. In Case 236 the character of the disease was unmistakable, but after an examination with the speculum a favourable prognosis had been given, and the actual cautery employed for months, and hopes of recovery held out to the last. The author expressed his conviction that neither in the living nor in the dead body had he ever seen a case of simple ulceration from chronic inflammation of the os or cervix uteri; and to apply the term to states of the os uteri in which the mucous membrane or, as it is termed by some, the bas.e.m.e.nt membrane, is not destroyed by ulceration, was an abuse of terms calculated only to deceive and mislead the members of the medical profession, from whom the truth has been carefully concealed. The speculum emanates from the syphilitic wards of the hospitals at Paris, and _it would have been better for the women of England had its use been confined to those inst.i.tutions_."--The _Lancet_, July 25, 1857.

Such is the language of earnest, honourable men, who have dared to dispel, by the light of true philosophy, the fog of "scientific" rascaldom--that empiric haze so desolating, so destructive to the inwrapped and blinded public. Few will deny that there are, in the foregoing extracts, sentiments which do honour to their authors, and revelations for which society should feel the deepest grat.i.tude.

Were we to relate the numbers of weak and deluded creatures who, upon the slightest pretext, submit to this accursed rite, it would appear incredible. We know that one fas.h.i.+onable pretender to peculiar skill in the diagnostics of uterine affections, has boasted of five such examinations in one family in a single day! and that another has spoken of the exposure of _fifty_ women to his professional gaze in the same s.p.a.ce of time. These are facts--horrible, but undeniable, facts! "O shame! where is thy blush?" O woman! where is thy vaunted modesty, in a country tainted by such unspeakable and hideous mysteries, permitted--nay, tacitly encouraged--as they are, under the hypocritical guise of scientific discovery, and the pretended mitigation of human ills? Is it possible that in this age, and in this our land, men should be found so utterly insensate, so beggared of all feeling, so lost to all the chivalry of manhood, that, with this libidinous iniquity made patent, they would not arise, and, in one mighty and overwhelming surge of execration, crush its perpetrators, and abolish this obscene invasion of marital rights. No!

perish the thought! The azure blood, which throbbed and pulsated in the British heart in those far off days of the second Richard, when the indecent outrages of the poll-tax gatherers lashed the people into fury at their daughters' wrongs, still runs in the veins of Englishmen; and we will not believe that the halo of purity, which made the homes of "merrie England" the watchword of our sires, can have departed for ever from those of their descendants.

CHAPTER IV.

"The chariest maid is prodigal enough, If she unmask her beauty to the moon; Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes; The canker galls the infants of the spring, Too oft before their b.u.t.tons be disclosed; And in the morn and liquid dew of youth, Contagious blastments are most imminent.

Be wary, then, best safety lies in fear."

We have already, in the foregoing pages, quoted the words of Roussel, a celebrated French physician of the last century, whose delicate and sensitive mind revolted at the indecency of the practice which had then but lately been adopted in his country; and before we proceed to quote more largely from the same author, we think it proper that our readers should be made acquainted with the character of the man who so lovingly exerted his great talents to release his countrywomen from the gross thraldom of designing charlatans and empirical impostors.

Dr. Cerise, in the account of Roussel prefixed to the edition of the Physical and Moral System of Women, published in Paris, 1855, says: "Among the celebrated physicians that France has produced, a great number have distinguished themselves not only by their erudition, but still more by the elegance of their language, by the elevation of their sentiments, by the profundity of their conceptions; their names belong to letters and philosophy, as much as to medicine. Roussel is a member of that glorious family of Pet.i.ts, Bordeus, Vicq-d'Azyrs, Cabanis, Aliberts, which, at the present day, is honourably represented by two writers, Pariset and Reveille-Parise. Through them medicine is not only a useful, but it is also an agreeable science.

"Let us hope, that so ill.u.s.trious a family will not become extinct, and that descendants worthy of it will faithfully keep alive the sacred fire, perpetually threatened by the freezing breath of scientific materialism.

"Roussel was born at Ax, in the department of Ariege, in 1742. His education, commenced in that town, was finished at Toulouse. His taste for medical study manifested itself early. He betook himself to Montpellier, where he profited by the scientific lectures of Lamure, Venel, and Barthez. These medical studies completed, he was desirous of further instruction, and came to Paris. He closely allied himself with Bordeu.

This physician, according to the expression of Alibert, was too ill.u.s.trious to be happy; the friends.h.i.+p of Roussel consoled his vexations; but Bordeu soon died, and Roussel had the melancholy commission to p.r.o.nounce his funeral elogy. We are a.s.sured that love was the genius of Roussel. "He was still very young," says his biographer, "when this sentiment was awakened in his soul; it was then that his inspired imagination began to meditate on the tastes, the manners, the pa.s.sions, and the habits of women, and that he made a constant study of their physical const.i.tution, and of the moral attributes which they derived from it. He soon arranged the fruits which he had collected, and composed a body of science interesting as its subject.

"Thus was written _the Physical and Moral System of Woman_. This treatise, which agreed in its development with a t.i.tle so imposing, has remained superior to all those which have been written upon woman, without excepting the remarkable work of M. Virey, which failed, perhaps, in eclipsing that of Roussel, solely from its severer method and more scientific manner of treatment. He soon undertook another treatise, intended to serve as a pendant to the former. This new treatise, ent.i.tled the _Physical and Moral System of Man_, was not completed, which, judging from what he had published, is much to be regretted. He caused to be inserted in the journals of the day, _An Essay on Sensibility_; _An Account of Madame Helvetius_; a short dissertation, ent.i.tled, _Historic Doubts on Sappho_; some remarks '_On the Sympathies_.' He had commenced a lengthened work on Stahl, the celebrated head of the medical college, called _Animist_, but this work remained unpublished; he reviewed the work of Madame de Stael, upon the Affinities of Literature with Social Inst.i.tutions; he applied himself to combat the doctrine of the indefinite perfectibility of the human spirit, developed by Condorcet, in one of his most remarkable writings. The problem was then proposed in terms such as could not afford any satisfactory conclusion--as yet the science of history did not exist. He wrote upon the right of making a will, which he regarded as inviolable and imprescriptible; he addressed public exhortations to political electors, to remind them of their duties and of their rights; he admired the inst.i.tutions of Lycurgus, and published a dissertation on the government of Sparta. It is thus that the empire of circ.u.mstances under which France at present exists dominates over all minds. Roussel, yet meditating with a tender partiality upon the physical and moral const.i.tution of woman, could not resist descending into the arena of political discussion. Thanks to the moderation of his character, his voice, in the midst of revolutionary storms, was hardly understood, and his existence was not disturbed.

"Roussel loved retirement and unaffected manners. Traits of a charming simplicity are related of him. Alibert congratulating him one day on the marriage of one of his brothers, suggested that he should follow his example and marry. 'I a.s.sure you,' replied the irresolute bachelor, 'that this idea often occurs to me, but one must go before the priest, before the magistrate--there is no end to the affair.' There are persons for whom pleasing and indefinite fantasies have a charm which they love to prolong; they seem to dread a real happiness which might deprive imagination of its most smiling visions. Roussel was one of these persons. He was smitten with a violent pa.s.sion for a young and beautiful person whom he had restored to health. Happy, doubtless, in secretly bearing a cherished image in his heart, he refrained from giving utterance to his thoughts.

One day it was announced that this person was going to be married. 'Ah,'

cried he, '_I am so grieved; I could not have believed it_;' and he shed abundant tears of regret. He was often sorrowful; in one of these fits of melancholy, he ran at midnight to a physician of his acquaintance--'My head turns,' said he; 'I feel myself very ill. I am come to you to implore your attention.' Imbert rea.s.sured him, and calmed his alarmed imagination. The two friends engaged in conversation, and Roussel forgot his malady.

"Roussel was good; benevolence, a quality so precious to a physician, was in him lovely and expansive. When he suffered, study was an asylum for his grief, a refuge for his afflicted spirit. He found in the joys of the mind a defence against the sorrows of the heart. His internal agitations dissipated themselves thus without gall and without bitterness. His excellence was proof even against evil days. He lived poor, but the affectionate and delicate hospitality of a respectable family never allowed him to perceive it. He could, thanks to the care of M. Falaize, neglect, quite at his ease, both his affairs and his fortune, exercise his profession with the confident and n.o.ble freedom so agreeable to elevated minds; meditate without interruption upon Plato, Plutarch, and Rabelais, and withdraw himself, without peril, from those petty torments which impose themselves under the name of social proprieties. A perfect courtesy with him was marvellously allied to good nature a little rough, and which was not without a dash of mischief. Roussel no more sought honours than fortune. He refused the offer of an honourable employment, made to him by the Great Frederic. He failed, however, to be called to the legislative body. He wanted only two votes. Powerful friends had designed him for the Tribunes.h.i.+p. He declined that honour, urging the weakness of his voice, and his timidity. Roussel was timid through excess of modesty.

"Roussel was endowed with a delicate const.i.tution. He had been suffering more than usual for many days, when he quitted Paris to retire into the country, to M. Falaize, near Chateaudun. Enfeebled by prolonged sufferings, he soon yielded to the attack of a fever which raged epidemically in the neighbourhood. He sank under it the second complementary day of the year X. (1802), aged about sixty years. Roussel had possessed devoted friends; those who survived him remained faithful to his memory. Alibert recorded his life with touching eloquence. He did more; he collected his princ.i.p.al writings, of which some were disseminated in the journals, and published an edition of his works."

This account of Roussel, brief as it is, will suffice to inform our readers that he was no ordinary man, and that, from his learning, and long experience as a physician, his opinions and reflections upon "the pretended art" of man-midwifery are ent.i.tled to the greatest respect.

Those who would ridicule his sentiments, and treat his arguments as false and visionary, and his ideas as antiquated and unsuited to the taste and advancement of the present day, are those who, from mean and despicable motives of self-interest, would confirm the vicious system which Roussel has denounced, and, while destroying woman's modesty, would erect their own fortune on its ruins.

Towards the end of the preface to the Physical and Moral System of Woman, will be found the following sentences, which we would commend to the serious consideration of every man whose sense of decency has not been altogether obliterated, and whose mind still retains any of those finer feelings, which G.o.d, when he made man in his own image, implanted in the human breast. "It is not the same, perhaps, with the abuses introduced by that art, almost unknown among the ancients, which, under the pretence of a.s.sisting nature in producing man, itself sometimes prevents his seeing the light, in attempting to do that which she unaided could more effectually perform; which enervates in woman, by effeminacy and the needless lengthening out of precautions, the instinct, which alone puts them in a condition to do without it. In fine, which, by a usage, as indecently as unreasonably repeated in men's attendance upon women, enfeebles, and at length annihilates the sentiment which most adorns the s.e.x. I have made some reflections upon this pretended art in the chapter which treats of natural labour." Again, in the chapter on pregnancy, Roussel speaks trumpet-tongued, not only against the indelicacy, but of the absolute inutility of those digital examinations _per v.a.g.i.n.am_ now in vogue, and so dogmatically prescribed in the text books of midwifery.

"As the instant when a woman conceives does not manifest itself in her by any well characterized expression, and the consequences of this act remain for some time concealed by a thick veil, that spirit of unrest which ordains that man, dissatisfied with the present which he may enjoy, should ever press on towards that future, which he perhaps shall never see, induces him to seek with eagerness the as yet hidden signs of pregnancy, and to question nature long before she deigns to speak. Men might, in this respect, spare themselves the torments of needless impatience, since it can neither accelerate nor r.e.t.a.r.d its object. It would be much more in order to wait patiently until the natural signs themselves announce pregnancy, than that the tentatives by which it is pretended they are antic.i.p.ated should annoy women weak enough to submit to them, without throwing any more light on the motive which suggests a recourse to them.

"These tentatives are the work of a shameless charlatanism, which solicits them, and which disports itself with chast.i.ty and decency, to establish its empire upon the ruins of a virtue to which the s.e.x owes its own most solid foundations.

"We here feel ourselves compelled to inform women, that those whom they employ at this kind of trials deceive them, in affecting a knowledge which they do not possess. All information derived from _the touch_ is very uncertain. The concurrence of external and obvious signs can alone be reckoned on; such as the increased size of the abdomen, the swelling of the bosom, preceded by qualms, nausea, and suppression of the menses. But the most decisive of all, by the actual avowal of all men-midwives, the sole indubitable proof consists in the movements of the infant, which make themselves felt towards the fourth month of pregnancy. Thus women can inform themselves better than any one whether they are with child, and the men-midwives, who are forced themselves to acknowledge this, ought to erase from their treatises on midwifery the nonsensical rules which they give upon _the touch_.[33] To give an idea of the solidity and wisdom of these rules, I need cite but one, taken from a work of one of the most celebrated men-midwives. 'When one is called on,' says he, 'to examine a girl by _the touch_ for some suspicion of pregnancy,[34] one ought at first to introduce the finger with caution, for fear of deflowering her, if she was not so.' Is not this the very climax of absurdity to be willing, upon the simple suspicion of an evil which, perhaps, is imaginary, to produce a real injury, to expose one's self, for the sake of knowing whether a girl had committed a fault, to the rendering more easy to her all those which she might commit in future, by destroying the prime bulwark which in her opposes itself to vice; in fine, to deflower a girl in order to discover whether she had lost her virginity?[35] And unhappily again for the rule, the means which it points out are insufficient to attain the desired information. It is from time alone that this revelation may be expected. Three or four months of patience will enlighten you more than can this dangerous practice, the disgraceful essays of which are worse than the doubts that they would dissipate. Although the inconveniences of this practice are not so considerable for women as for girls, we would never do them the injustice to suppose, that it would not be painful for them to consent to an examination which ought to humiliate them in their own eyes, and which must sometimes render them contemptible in the eyes of others: they should free themselves from this torturing ceremony, though there was no other reason for it than its inutility for the object which induces them to submit to it."[36] Again, in the chapter on natural labour, Roussel says:--

"Final causes, which some philosophers would banish as a barren principle (which is perhaps true in natural philosophy), are in medicine the foundation of the most solid truths, which the ancients, and above all, Hippocrates, have transmitted to us. They have perhaps supposed that it was too trite and too commonplace to think that the Creator, who presided at the formation of our bodies, had made the mouth to eat, the eyes to see, and the ears to hear. We know not if it required much effort and subtle reasoning to divest them of the first ideas of common sense, but it seems to us, that they who reject altogether final causes discard perhaps as much truth as those who have most misused them, for it must be owned, that certain writers have made a strange use of them. Not to travel out of the subject which occupies us, we may quote M. Astruc,[37] who alleges that the coverings of the foetus, in engaging themselves at the same time with it in the orifice of the womb, serve to line that pa.s.sage, and to defend it against the bruisings of the foetus, and _the fingers of the midwife_. To suppose that nature, in arranging the objects which should a.s.sist delivery, had contemplated the awkwardness of male and female midwives, is to impute to her a foresight which unhappily would be only too necessary, but that she had little for the errors that we are able to commit. She has done all for the best in our favour, so much the worse for us if we mar her work. _It must be_, said the same author, _that its face (of the foetus) was turned from the side of the os sacrum, to prevent its nose from being crushed by the bones of the p.u.b.es, and that it might not be suffocated by the waters of the amnios_. A child that had been living nine months in water to be suffocated, when pa.s.sing out of it, by a few drops! O Astruc! have you well considered this?

"Without, then, ascribing to nature frivolous fears, or confining her to details which she disdains, we may reasonably believe that after having alloted to different organs destined to aid in generation, the modifications most suitable to the conception of the child, and its preservation during pregnancy, she would afford those also which should, with the least inconvenience, effect its exit from the maternal bosom."[38]

After describing the process of nature in parturition, Roussel goes on to say:--"O Rubens! I leave to your pencil the care of expressing that touching state in which the last impressions of abated pain still tinge the serenity of purest joy; where the melancholy, caused by sufferings now terminating, is not yet effaced by the most delightful sentiments which can animate the soul; where the dread of losing life, natural enough in suffering, gives place to the delicious pleasure of having presented it to a new being. But wherefore must it be, that this state is the price of a train of inconveniences, and a gradation of suffering often insupportable; and why are we here compelled to envy the kinds of animals amongst which pregnancy is without embarra.s.sment, and delivery almost without a pang, or at least exempt from the sad or fatal consequences which so often follow it in the human species? It would, nevertheless, be wrong to tax nature with injustice.[39] We yet find races in whom her primitive impress has never been effaced by the abuses of a refined society, and amongst whom women enjoy nearly the same privileges as the females of animals.

"The women of the Ostiaks, it is said,[40] never have any uneasiness about the time of their delivery, and take none of those precautions which European effeminacy renders almost indispensable. They are delivered wherever they may happen to be without any inconvenience; they, or the persons who a.s.sist them, plunge the new-born infant into water or snow, and the mother returns immediately to her ordinary occupations, or continues her march, if on a journey.[41] As these people dwell in the vicinity of the Samoides,[42] between the fifty-ninth and sixtieth degree of north lat.i.tude, they do not fail to attribute this vigorous const.i.tution to the severity of the climate.

"Meanwhile, in the same history, we read that the wives of the dwellers in the island of Amboina, towards the third degree of south lat.i.tude, are in the same category; and the author or compiler of that history, in reporting the fact, discovers the cause of it in the heat of the climate, which renders women's members supple and capable of accommodating themselves with ease to the labours of parturition. One may perceive from this how versatile are the explanations obtained from _cold_ and _heat_, and how, in the jargon of mechanicians, causes altogether opposite can serve with more vraisemblance than actual truth for proof of the same effect. We repeat again, the effect of manners and custom is not often enough considered. In all climates nature has given both to man and brute the faculties necessary for fulfilling the functions of life with ease.

The former has very often perverted their use, believing that luxuriousness, precautions, and an abundance of all things could supply their place.