The Danger and Immodesty of the Present Too General Custom of Unnecessarily Employing Men-Midwives: Being the Letters Which Lately Appeared Under the Signature of a Man-Midwife. with an Introduction, a Treatise on the Milk, and an Appendix.

A furious 18th-century polemic that reads like the Twitter/X debate of its era. The anonymous author mounts a scathing attack on the rising practice of men attending childbirth, treating this medical development as nothing less than an existential threat to female virtue and modesty. Through a series of satirical letters, the author dismantles the argument for male midwives with the kind of righteous indignation that only someone absolutely certain of their position can muster, while also delivering a treatise on the dangers of failing to nurse infants properly. The text captures a genuinely fascinating moment in medical history when the professionalization of childbirth was being contested on grounds that now seem almost incomprehensible. Yet beneath the comical outrage lies a real argument about bodily autonomy, trust in institutions, and who gets to control female spaces. The author is wrong about nearly everything, of course, but the vehemence with which they make their case makes for genuinely entertaining reading.