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Samuel Gregory
(19 Apr 1813 - Mar 1872)
Gregory disapproved of male
doctors as midwives, and opened
the Boston
Female Medical School in 1848. At a time when orthodox medical schools
in the United States were hostile to the idea of educating women,
Gregory's institution was the first medical
school exclusively for women in the world.
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“The introduction of men into the
lying in chamber in place of female attendants, has increased the
suffering and dangers of childbearing women, and brought multiplied
injuries and fatalities upon mothers and children; it violates the
sensitive feelings of husbands and wives and causes an untold amount of
domestic misery. The unlimited intimacy between a male profession and
the female population silently and effectually wears away female
delicacy and professional morality, and tends probably more than any
other cause in existence, to undermine the foundation of public
virtue.”
— Samuel Gregory
Man-midwifery Exposed and
Corrected (1848)
quoted in The Male Midwife and the Female Doctor:
The Gynecology Controversy in Nineteenth Century America
Charles Rosenburg and Carroll Rovenberg Smith (Editors) publ. Arno, 1974.
quoted in The Male Midwife and the Female Doctor:
The Gynecology Controversy in Nineteenth Century America
Charles Rosenburg and Carroll Rovenberg Smith (Editors) publ. Arno, 1974.
“... man-midwifery, with other
'indecencies,' is a great system of fashionable prostitution; a primary
school of infamy - as the fashionable hotel and parlor wine glass
qualify candidates for the two-penny grog-shop and the gutter.”
— Samuel Gregory
Man-midwifery Exposed and
Corrected (1848)
