Page:A History of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania.djvu/106



1810 a separation was effected between the two branches of Anatomy and Obstetrics, which had continued in the hands of a single Professor from the origin of the School of Medicine —a long period of forty-five years. This was owing more to the ignorance of the community at large with respect to the utility of Obstetrics than to the want of appreciation of its importance on the part of the profession. “Indeed, the public had to be educated to the opinion that science and extensive medical knowledge were required to conduct ‘labor’ with safety and success, as much as surgical operations or the treatment of disease.”

In Europe, Obstetrics, as an art and science, was forced to disenthral itself from prejudice and disesteem. In consequence of the fastidiousness existing among women, it was little appealed to in aid of their sufferings. Delivery was assigned to, or rather permitted to be exercised by those entirely ignorant of its principles. Midwifery was in the hands of elderly women, who were usually conceited in proportion to their ignorance. To show that in the middle of the eighteenth century, midwifery was hardly regarded as belonging to the regular duties of the medical practitioner, it may be stated that Dr. Smellie, who afterwards contributed so much to improve and perfect it, at the commencement of his career