| Date | 1769 |
|---|---|
| Location | Edinburgh |
| Description |
Excerpt from the opinion of the Lord Advocate to the query concerning the exclusive privilege of the surgeons to practice midwifery. October 1769 The battle for the control of midwifery was not confined to gendered lines. In Edinburgh there was also friction between men themselves (surgeons and physicians), although tension between these two groups was ongoing and not merely limited to contentious issues around midwifery. In 1769 members of the Incorporation of Surgeons submitted a query to the Lord Advocate defending the privileges laid out in their Charter, specifically “that the Physicians are excluded from every sort of Manual operation and Consequently from Midwifery”. The physicians however refused to concede the specialisation to the surgeons, as well as the latter’s demands that physicians found to be practicing midwifery should have their license and fellowship suspended. The Lord Advocate concluded that “if Midwifery did exclusively belong either to the Physicians or the Surgeons it does not seem more naturally to belong to the art of the latter than that of the former”. He went on to state that midwifery was not “under the exclusive knowledge either of one or the other” and was not an obvious male operation, nor one that any specific group of medical practitioners could lay claim to. Interestingly, he was inadvertently implying that the art of midwifery naturally, and historically, lay with women. He therefore recommended that it should not fall under any exclusive privilege either of the physicians or the surgeons. |
| Format | Manuscript |
| Original Index Number | RCSEd 1/9/23 |
