Forceps

“As long as the male practitioner deployed the crotchet or some other craniotomy device, the realm of live deliveries belonged to the midwife; this entailed an inviolable boundary between male and female competencies. As a result, medical men regarded the midwife’s office with a certain implicit respect – whatever the weaknesses of real-life midwives, or some of those midwives. But once the male practitioner could deliver a living child, the boundary was broken; his critical attitude hardened and deepened, and his ambitions were transformed” (A. Wilson, 99). Yet, impact of forceps was limited since forceps practice was limited to emergency work; it did not signal the displacement of the midwife but a “new equilibrium between midwives and male practitioners” (101).