Note 20 — AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE AMONG THE INDIANS OF NORTH-AMERICA; AND A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THEIR DISEASES AND REMEDIES WITH THOSE OF CIVILIZED NATIONS. Read before the American Philosophical Society, held at Philadelphia, on the 4th of February, 1774.
Reading edition
In the enervated age of Athens, a law was passed which confined the practice of midwifery only to the men. It was, however, repealed, upon a woman's dying in childbirth, rather than be delivered by a man-midwife. It appears from the bills of mortality in London and Dublin, that about one in seventy of those women die in childbirth, who are in the hands of midwives; but from the accounts of the lying-in hospitals in those cities, which are under the care of man-midwives, only one in a hundred and forty perishes in childbirth.