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.  Thus, Dr. John Burns, of Glasgow, in his Principles of Midwifery, states that “some women, from motives of false delicacy, are averse from examination until the pains become severe.”  He adds that “it is usual for the room to be darkened, and the bed-curtains drawn close, during an examination.”  Many old pictures show the accoucheur groping in the dark, beneath the bed-clothes, to perform operations on women in childbirth. (A.  Kind, “Das Weib als Gebaererin in der Kunst,” Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Bd.  II, Heft 5, p. 203.)

In Iceland, Winkler stated in 1861 that he sometimes slept in the same room as a whole family; “it is often the custom for ten or more persons to use the same room for living in and sleeping, young and old, master and servant, male and female, and from motives of economy, all the clothes, without exception, are removed.” (G.  Winkler, Island; seine Bewohner, etc., pp. 107, 110.)

“At Cork,” saye Fynes Moryson, in 1617, “I have seen with these eyes young maids stark naked grinding corn with certain stones to make cakes thereof.” (Moryson, Itinerary, Part 3, Book III, Chapter V.)

“In the more remote parts of Ireland,” Moryson elsewhere says, where the English laws and manners are unknown, “the very chief of the Irish, men as well as women, go naked in very winter-time, only having their privy parts covered with a rag of linen, and their bodies with a loose mantle.  This I speak of my own experience.”  He goes on to tell of a Bohemian baron, just come from the North of Ireland, who “told me in great earnestness that he, coming to the house of Ocane, a great lord among them, was met at the door with sixteen women, all naked, excepting their loose mantles; whereof eight or ten were very fair, and two seemed very nymphs, with which strange sight, his eyes being dazzled, they led him into the house, and then sitting down by the fire with crossed legs, like tailors, and so low as could not but offend chaste eyes, desired him to sit down with them.  Soon after, Ocane, the lord of the country, came in, all naked excepting a loose mantle, and shoes, which he put off as soon as he came in, and entertaining the baron after his best manner in the Latin tongue, desired him to put off his apparel, which he thought to be a burthen to him, and to sit naked by the fire with this naked company.  But the baron... for shame, durst not put off his apparel.” (Ib.  Part 3, Book IV, Chapter II.)

Coryat, when traveling in Italy in the