Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: Âmes d'automne by Lorrain Jean Heidbrinck Oswald Illustrator
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page
Ebook has 24 lines and 5000 words, and 1 pages
HINTS TO HUSBANDS: A Revelation of THE MAN-MIDWIFE'S MYSTERIES.
BY GEORGE MORANT, LATE GRENADIER GUARDS.
"Sit you down, And let me wring your heart, for so I shall, If it be made of penetrable stuff; If damned custom have not brazed it so, That it be proof and bulwark against sense."
Third Edition, REVISED AND ENLARGED.
LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., 4, STATIONERS' HALL COURT. 1857.
TO THE HUSBANDS & FATHERS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM, AND TO THOSE HONOURABLE MEN OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION, WHO REPROBATE AND CONDEMN THE UNNATURAL CUSTOM OF MAN-MIDWIFERY, AS AN OUTRAGE ON THE MODESTY OF WOMEN, AND DEROGATORY TO THEIR OWN VOCATION; AND TO ALL WHO HAVE HEARTS TO FEEL AND COURAGE TO COPE WITH THIS ENORMOUS WRONG, THESE PAGES ARE INSCRIBED BY
PREFACE
The two-fold object which we desire to attain in the following pages, and to which we earnestly entreat the attention of our readers, is the exposure and amendment of a vast social evil, which we have reason to believe has, to most reflecting men, become well nigh intolerable. It will be obvious that to bring this evil, with effect, to the bar of public opinion, we must probe it to the very core, and fearlessly unveil and drag into the light its indecent mysteries. In so doing we shall doubtless incur the censures of those easy-going people who agree with the poet that--
"Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise;"
who, like the bird of the desert, by hiding their heads deem their bodies out of danger; who, dead to all the generous sympathies which elevate man above the brute, would reduce the minds of others to their own dull and dreary level of stolid inanity; of those prudent persons who, closing their eyes to the lightning flash and their ears to the vollied thunder, sneak through the world by any side-path sooner than encounter a difficulty foot to foot and hand to hand; and, without pretending to any extraordinary knowledge of the human heart, we fear, of the majority of those women who have already sacrificed their modesty at the altar of custom; and, above all, of that class whose presumptuous charlatanism we desire to lay bare. But for all this we care not one jot, provided the mists of imposture be dispelled, and our countrywomen rescued from the disgrace and degradation of an odious system, which, originating in a dissolute age, has since been promoted and encouraged by self-interested empirics, and sanctioned by indifference, credulity, and error.
HINTS TO HUSBANDS, &c. &c.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
We are accustomed to speak of ourselves as of a highly moral people; and of our manners, habits, and customs as superior to those of other nations; and of our capital as the most civilized city in the world;
"But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of mind, When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman's ware or his word? When the poor are hovell'd and hustled together, each sex like swine, When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie; When chalk, and alum, and plaster are sold to the poor for bread, And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life. And sleep must lie down armed, for the villanous centre-bits Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights. While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps as he sits, To pestle a poison'd poison behind his crimsoned lights."
Oh, but, say you, these are not flaws in the crystal, but mere specks upon the mirror, which a little careful polishing may remove with ease. See the propriety, order, and decency of our households; our noble sense of justice, right, and honour; our strict observance of religious duties; the chaste and modest demeanour of our women; and beholding these things, who shall say that we are not a moral people?
To the unreflecting and casual observer, mere outward semblance would appear to justify and confirm this character of our society. Nevertheless there is, beneath the surface of this seeming health, a loathsome canker, eating into the very vitals of home life! and we ourselves are sapping the very foundations of morality, and insulting and outraging the most precious feelings of those whom we should love best and cherish most upon earth, by subjecting them to a usage which first robs them of their birthright, modesty, and then deadens, and finally destroys, all perception of their loss; while "moral England," under the delusion of a falsely termed necessity, endures, and even fosters a pollution, which France, to her honour, now repudiates and abhors!
The spirit of evil, though not, as in Eden,
"Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, Assaying by his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy,"
Hecquet says, "The Greeks, moreover, had their female physicians, as we perceive by the words and , which have been preserved to us."
"Yonder a vile physician, blabbing The case of his patient...;"
"O shame! where is thy blush?"
It now becomes our most painful but necessary task to explain what that "process" is to which we have alluded, by giving some extracts from one of the principal works on midwifery, and in the very words of the treatise, to prove the gross outrages to which women are obliged to submit when "attended" by these male practitioners. Nothing but a sense of the enormity of this monster evil would induce us to contaminate our pages by the introduction of such garbage; but we are well aware that "general observations make little impression on the mind even of the most reflecting reader, if not attended with a detail of facts which proves that it is well founded; and one authentic example will produce a stronger conviction than whole chapters of assertion."
EXTRACTS FROM DR. RAMSBOTHAM'S OBSTETRIC MEDICINE AND SURGERY.
"Let it not be supposed this declaration includes the admission, that a partial acquaintance with the obstetric branch of medicine is sufficient for the safe practice of the profession; for although, in thirty-nine cases out of forty, little is required to be done beyond protecting the extended structures from injury, separating the child, and extracting the placenta from the vagina after its total exclusion from the uterine cavity; still, in the fortieth danger may occur, only to be arrested by the promptest, the most decisive, and most judiciously directed help.
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page