Compendium of the Theory and Practice of Midwifery…, A.
[Health issues]. Bard, Samuel, M.D. A Compendium of the Theory and Practice of Midwifery, Containing Practical Instructions for the Management of Women During Pregnancy, In Labour, and in Child-Bed; Calculated to correct the Errors, and to improve the Practice, of Midwives; As Well as to Serve as an Introduction to the Study of this Art, for Students and Young Practitioners. New York: Printed and Sold by Collins and Perkins, 1808.
Small 8vo.; illustrations throughout; pages lightly foxed, edges occasionally darkened; rear endpapers and pastedowns water-stained; brown calf, spine stamped in red and gilt; covers heavily worn, scuffed; spine tender.
First edition of an early modern guide to midwifery, containing many questionable remedies for “female ailments,” gruesomely illustrated. In the West, female medical practitioners—midwives—were able to ply their trade uninterrupted until the late 18th-century, when the growing population of doctors—male graduates of medical academies—emerged as a source of direct competition. A well-documented battle for territory ensued, a battle won by traditionally-educated men at the expense of the informally-trained women.
As the subtitle suggests, this text in fact played a role in that history: it is not so much a training manual as a manifesto which urges the regulation of midwifery by male medical professionals. The author regularly stresses the need for male supervision of the female would-be professionals:
Having frequently in the course of my practice, and particularly since my residence in the country, had occasion to observe how much our midwives stand in need of instruction, and how incapable most of them are, from pecuniary circumstances, as well as from deficiency of education, to derive it from books of science...I have thought that a concise, cheap book, containing a set of plain but correct directions... would...prove a useful work. (p. 3)
Elsewhere, the author directly advocates the licensing of midwives:
...an attempt has lately been made in this state to regulate the practice of physic, in which it seems to have been the object of the legislature, by exacting some proof of previous study and learning, to improve the knowledge of future practitioners. Would not a law to provide for the education of common midwives, and to compel them to give some proof of knowledge and ability, before they undertake the practice of their profession, be equally useful? (p. 5)
Such laws were, of course, eventually enacted, and the profession of midwifery was virtually extinguished as a result.
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