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# From the middle of the eighteenth century, men were increasingly called upon to assist at childbirth in England: physicians with surgical training and specialised instruments were far more effective than midwives versed in folk medicine
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/nachinaia-s-serediny-xviii-veka-v-anglii-vse-chashche-stali-pribegat-k-pomoshchi-muzhchin-dlia-rodovspomozheniia-vladeiushchie-khirurgicheskimi-navykami-i-spetsialnymi-instrumentami-vra/
- Published: 2019-09-20T16:45:16.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:43:34.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Books, London, Science, Mores, Society

[​​](https://telegra.ph/file/1e37bac8e0ada8bad9def.jpg?ref=theparnassian.com)From the middle of the eighteenth century, men were increasingly called upon to assist at childbirth in England: physicians with surgical training and specialised instruments were far more effective than midwives versed in folk medicine. But the fashion provoked a public controversy, fuelled all the more by the fact that only the well-to-do could afford the services of a fully qualified doctor.

Across Europe, indeed, the situation was lamentable: [women were not taught](https://theparnassian.com/pervyi-akusherskii-maneken-byl-skonstruirovan-anzhelikoi-diu-kudro-proslavivsheisia-blagodaria-svoei-knige-po-osnovam-rodovspomozheniia-i-shirochaishei-praktike-obucheniia-molodykh-akus/?ref=theparnassian.com) medicine at universities, while men were not customarily admitted to the female body. Previously, male physicians had been summoned to a confinement only in the most difficult and dangerous cases. Now, as the midwives drawn from the common people began to lose their clientele, they spread various myths to the effect that all these instruments were horribly dangerous and could easily harm both mother and child. The professional physicians, for their part, doubted the value of the midwives' experience and of traditional approaches to childbirth.

But the chief argument was not a medical fact but a moral one: among the unenlightened strata of society the opinion took hold that men entered the obstetric profession out of a hunger for naked female bodies, and were therefore immoral and perverted; they were called sly and indecent.

The English pamphleteer and caricaturist Samuel William Fores even published, under the pseudonym John Blunt, a brochure in 14 letters arguing that man-midwives represented a personal, domestic and national evil. The author, in decidedly eloquent terms, defended the traditionalist view of the process of childbirth assistance. He called women who had recourse to man-midwives shameless brutes who, admitting a strange man to their bed during labour, would never blush, unless with the help of rouge.

Yet beyond these wild and hidebound pronouncements, Fores, for example, urged women midwives to obtain a proper education and to strive to drive their male competitors out of the ladies' bedchambers. In essence, it was a guide to conduct rather than a medical note. The author tells women, for instance, that it matters more to preserve their lives, to dance at balls and to lend an ear to flattering Frenchmen.

The brochure is illustrated with an extremely interesting drawing in which the man-midwife is depicted as a sort of hybrid, stuck between the male and female guise. The man, dressed in a fashionable suit, holds a medical instrument, while behind him are assorted frightening forceps and potions for the seduction of women; the female half of this creature, in the guise of a housewife, is placed in a cosy domestic setting, where decent births ought to take place.