ally in large cities, and much from this love of change, of talk, of having everything explained,1 or at least named, especially if it be in Latin, of running from one 'charming' specialist to another; of doing a little privately2 and dishonestly to one's-self or the children with the globules; of going to see some notorious great man without telling or taking with them their old family friend, merely, as they say, 'to satisfy their mind,' and of course, ending in leaving, and affronting, and injuring the wise and good man. I don't

1 Dr. Cullen's words are weighty: "Neither the acutest genius nor the soundest judgment will avail in judging of a particular science, in regard to which they have not been exercised. have been obliged to please my patients sometimes with reasons, and I have found that any will pass, even with able divines and acute lawyers; the same will pass with the husbands as with the wives,'

2 I may seem too hard on the female doctors, but I am not half so hard or so bitter as the old Guy (or, as his accomplished and best editor M. Reveillé-Parise, insists on calling him, Gui) Patin. I have afterwards called Dr. J. H. Davidson our Scottish Guy Patin; and any one who knew that remarkable man, and knows the Letters of the witty and learned enemy of Mazarin, of antimony, and of quacks, will acknowledge the likeness. Patin, speaking of a certain Mademoiselle de Label, who had interfered with his treatment, says,-' C'est un sot animal qu'une femme qui se mêle de notre métier.' But the passage is so clever and so characteristic of the man, that I give it in full :'Noël Falconet a porté lui-même la lettre à Mademoiselle de Label; son fils est encore malade. Elle ne m'a point voulu croire; et au lieu de se servir de mes remèdes, elle lui a donné des siens, quo agnito recessi. C'est un sot animal qu'une femme qui se mêle de notre métier: cela n'appartient qu'à ceux qui ont un haut-de-chausses et la tête bien faite. J'avois fait saigner

say these evils are new, I only say they are large and active, and are fast killing their opposite virtues. Many a miserable and tragic story might be told of mothers, whose remorse will end only when they themselves lie beside some dead and beloved child, whom they, without thinking, without telling the father, without 'meaning anything,' have, from some such grave folly, sent to the better country, leaving themselves desolate and convicted. Publicity, itching ears, want of reverence for the unknown, want of

et purger ce malade; il se portoit mieux; elle me dit ensuite que mes purgatifs lui avoient fait mal, et qu'elle le purgeoit de ses petits remèdes, dont elle se servoit à Lyon autrefois. Quand j'eus reconnu par ces paroles qu'elle ne faisait pas grand état de mes ordonnances, je la quittai là et ai pratiqué le précepte, sinite mortuos sepelire mortuos. Peut-être pourtant qu'il en réchappera, ce que je souhaite de tout mon cœur; car s'il mouroit, elle diroit que ce seroit moi qui l'aurois tué. Elle a témoigné à Noël Falconet qu'elle avoit regret de m'avoir fâché, qu'elle m'enverroit de l'argent (je n'en ai jamais pris d'eux). Feu M. Hautin disoit: Per monachos et monachas, cognatos et cognatas, vicinos et vicinas, medicus non facit res suas. Ce n'est pas faire à une femme de pratiquer la méthode de Galien, res est sublimioris intelligentiæ; il faut avoir l'esprit plus fort. Mulier est animal dimidiati intellectus; il faut qu'elles filent leur que nouille, ou au moins, comme dit Saint Paul, contineant se in silentio. Feu M. de Villeroi, le grand secrétaire d'Etat, qui avoit une mauvaise femme (il n'étoit pas tout seul, et la race n'en est pas morte), disoit qu'en latin une femme étoit mulier, c'est-à-dire mule hier, mule demain, mule toujours." ·

à

1 Salomon a dit quelque part : Il n'y a pas de malice au-dessus de celle d'une ferme. Erasme mit à côté cette réflexion: Vous observerez qu'il n'y avait pas encore de moines.

(R. P.)

trust in goodness, want of what we call faith, want of gratitude and fair dealing, on the part of the public; and on the part of the profession, cupidity, curiosity, restlessness, ambition, false trust in self and in science, the lust and haste to be rich, and to be thought knowing and omniscient, want of breeding and good sense, of common honesty and honour, these are the occasions and results of this state of things.

I am not, however, a pessimist,-I am, I trust, a rational optimist, or at least a meliorist. That as a race, and as a profession, we are gaining, I don't doubt; to disbelieve this, is to distrust the Supreme Governor, and to miss the lesson of the time, which is, in the main, enlargement and progress. But we

should all do our best to keep what of the old is good, and detect, and moderate, and control, and remove what of the new is evil. In saying this, I would speak as much to myself as to my neighbours. It is in vain, that yvóli σeavròv (know thyself) is for ever descending afresh and silently from heaven like dew; all this in vain, if èywye yɩyváσkw (I myself know, I am as a god, what do I not know !) is for ever speaking to us from the ground and from ourselves.

Let me acknowledge-and here the principle or habit of publicity has its genuine scope and power -the immense good that is in our time doing by carrying Hygienic reform into the army, the factory, and the nursery-down rivers and across fields. I

see in all these great good; but I cannot help also seeing those private personal dangers I have spoken of, and the masses cannot long go on improving if the individuals deteriorate.

There is one subject which may seem an odd one for a miscellaneous book like this, but one in which I have long felt a deep and deepening concern. To be brief and plain, I refer to man-midwifery, in all its relations, professional, social, statistical, and moral. I have no space now to go into these fully. I may, if some one better able does not speak out, on some future occasion try to make it plain from reason and experience, that the management by accoucheurs, as they are called, of natural labour, and the separation of this department of the human economy from the general profession, has been a greater evil than a good; and that we have little to thank the Grand Monarque for, in this as in many other things, when, to conceal the shame of the gentle La Vallière, he sent for M. Chison instead of the customary sage-femme.

Any husband or wife, any father or mother, who will look at the matter plainly, may see what an inlet there is here to possible mischief, to certain unseemliness, and to worse. Nature tells us with her own voice what is fitting in these cases; and nothing but the omnipotence of custom, or the urgent cry of peril, terror, and agony, what Luther calls miserrima miseria, would make her ask for the presence of

a man on such an occasion, when she hides herself, and is in travail. And as in all such cases, the evil reacts on the men as a special class, and on the profession itself.

It is not of grave moral delinquencies I speak, and the higher crimes in this region; it is of affront to Nature, and of the revenge which she always takes on both parties, who actively or passively disobey her. Some of my best and most valued friends are honoured members of this branch; but I believe all the real good they can do, and the real evils they can prevent in these cases, would be attained, if—instead of attending,-to their own ludicrous loss of time, health, sleep, and temper,-some 200 cases of delivery every year, the immense majority of which are natural, and require no interference, but have nevertheless wasted not a little of their life, their patience, and their understanding-they had, as I would always have them to do, and as any well-educated resolute doctor of medicine ought to be able to do, confined themselves to giving their advice and assistance to the midwife when she needed it.

I know much that may be said against this-ignorance of midwives; dreadful effects of this, etc. ; but to all this I answer, Take pains to educate carefully, and to pay well, and treat well these women, and you may safely regulate ulterior means by the ordinary general laws of surgical and medical therapeutics.