Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
A
TREATISE
ON THE
ART of MIDWIFERY.
SETTING FORTH
Various Abuses therein,
Especially as to the
Practice with Instruments:
THE WHOLE
Serving to put all Rational Inquirers in a fair Way of very safely forming their own Judgement upon the Question;
Which it is best to employ,
In Cases of Pregnancy and Lying-in,
A
MAN-MIDWIFE;
OR, A
MIDWIFE.
TO
All Fathers, Mothers
and likely soon to be Either.
Though the subject ofthe following sheets is ofsuch universal importance,that it would be difficult toname that human individual, to whomit does not in some measure relate,you, it doubtless, more immediatelyconcerns.
Under no protection then so properlyas yours can a work be put, notiipresumingly calculated to determineyour judgment, but only to recommendto you the examination of apoint, in which Nature would havesuch just reproaches to make to you,for cruelty to yourselves, if you wasindolently to determine yourselves eitherwithout an examination, or on ablind implicit confidence in others;in others, perhaps, interested to misleadyou. This last advertence ofmine will, more than all that I couldoffer besides, prove to you my sincereunaffected with for your favorable acceptanceof this essay of mine, on thefooting of absolutely no interest butpurely yours. And that interest howdear! how sacred! How indispensablyought it to challenge your preferencealmost to any other interest of yourown, and much more surely to any ofothers.
iiiHappily then for you, in a matterof such common concernment to human-kind,Nature has not