[70] "The conduct of medical men in all former ages proves still farther that which we would establish (that the profession of man-midwife is repugnant to nature). If they required information on the state of their female patients, it was to the midwives they applied. The midwife, therefore, passed for the eye of the doctor, because it was through her ministration that he assured himself of what he neither committed to his own examination or to that of another man."--_Hecquet_ "_De l'Indecence aux Hommes d'accoucher les Femmes_," page 6.
[71] Albertus Magnus de Secretis Mulierum. _Ed. Amst._ 1662, p. 85.
[72] The _man_-midwife usually intimates his wish to make the examination _per vaginam_, through the medium of the nurse of his own recommendation, and should the patient, struck with the daring impropriety of his request, desire to inform her husband of the infamous proposal, the nurse dissuades her by saying, that "husbands are not supposed to understand these things," and that she will probably destroy both her own life, and that of her child, by refusing to submit to it! After this the accoucheur soon triumphs, the examination is effected without further remonstrance, and the victim is irretrievably entangled in his insidious toils.
"The moon had gathered oft her monthly store Of light, and oft in darkness left the sky, Since Monnema a growing burthen bore Of life and hope. The appointed weeks go by, And now her hour is come, and none is nigh To help; but human help she needed none. A few short throes, endured with scarce a cry, Upon the bank she laid her new-born son, Then slid into the stream, and bathed, and all was done."
[78] What will the men-midwives, with all their precautionary humbug, say to this?
"On the 3rd of June, 1857, at Moradabad, amid the terrors of mutiny, the wife of Captain M. B. W----, Bengal Native Infantry, gave birth to a son, and on the same day, with all the officers and their families, escaped to Nynee Tal, a hill station distant about sixty-five miles, which they reached in safety on the 5th instant at 11 a.m. They fled with only the clothes on their backs, having been plundered of everything."--_Correspondent of the Times._
Well might this English lady exclaim with the Indian mother, "Here, Englishmen, here is a young warrior!"