me into the chamber till all was over, and
signified her intention of then performing the interesting office of
presenting the new-born child to its father. I was sitting in a parlour;
and it was not till after two o'clock on Thursday morning, that I
received the alarming intelligence, that the placenta was not yet
removed, and that the midwife dared not proceed any further, and gave
her opinion for calling in a male practitioner. I accordingly went for
Dr. Poignand, physician and man-midwife to the same hospital, who
arrived between three and four hours after the birth of the child. He
immediately proceeded to the extraction of the placenta, which he
brought away in pieces, till he was satisfied that the whole was
removed. In that point however it afterwards appeared that he was
mistaken.

The period from the birth of the child till about eight o'clock the next
morning, was a period full of peril and alarm. The loss of blood was
considerable, and produced an almost uninterrupted series of fainting
fits. I went to the chamber soon after four in the morning, and found
her in this state. She told me some time on Thursday, "that she should
have died the preceding night, but that she was determined not to leave
me." She added, with one of those smiles which so eminently illuminated
her countenance, "that I should not be like Porson," alluding to the
circumstance of that great man having lost his wife, after being only a
few months married. Speaking of what she had already passed through, she
declared, "that she had never known what bodily pain was before."

On Thursday morning Dr. Poignand repeated his visit. Mary had just
before expressed some inclination to see Dr. George Fordyce, a man
probably of more science than any other medical professor in England,
and between whom and herself there had long subsisted a mutual
friendship. I mentioned this to Dr. Poignand, but he rather
discountenanced the idea, observing that he saw no necessity for it, and
that he supposed Dr. Fordyce was not particularly conversant with
obstetrical cases; but that I would do as I pleased. After Dr. Poignand
was gone, I determined to send for Dr. Fordyce. He accordingly saw the
patient about three o'clock on Thursday afternoon. He however perceived
no particular cause of alarm; and, on that or the next day, quoted, as I
am told, Mary's case, in a mixed company, as a corroboration of a
favourite idea of his, of the propriety of employing females i