Also,
why take fleas and other insects to bed with one? Although our
men teased them in various ways, they would not change their
habits." (Passek, _Denkwuerdigkeiten_, German translation, p. 14.)
Until late in the seventeenth century, women in England, as well
as France, suffered much in childbirth from the ignorance and
superstition of incompetent midwives, owing to the prevailing
conceptions of modesty, which rendered it impossible (as it is
still, to some extent, in some semi-civilized lands) for male
physicians to attend them. Dr. Willoughby, of Derby, tells how,
in 1658, he had to creep into the chamber of a lying-in woman on
his hands and knees, in order to examine her unperceived. In
France, Clement was employed secretly to attend the mistresses of
Louis XIV in their confinements; to the first he was conducted
blindfold, while the King was concealed among the bed-curtains,
and the face of the lady was enveloped in a network of lace. (E.
Malins, "Midwifery and Midwives," _British Medical Journal_, June
22, 1901; Witkowski, _Histoire des Accouchements_, 1887, pp. 689
et seq.) Even until the Revolution, the examination of women in
France in cases of rape or attempted outrage was left to a jury
of matrons. In old English manuals of midwifery, even in the
early nineteenth century, we still find much insistence on the
demands of modesty.
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