The dictionaries say that the terms obstetrics and midwifery are synonymous but I would draw a distinction between them. The term midwifery should apply to the practice of caring for women during child-birth by the old blind, empirical methods, while the term obstetrics should connote the fact that to the wisdom gained by experience has been added all the knowledge supplied by recent scientific investigation. In short, midwifery is the practice of midwives, male and female, and obstetrics is the practice of the scientifically trained physician. For many centuries the midwife reigned supreme in her field, and only on rare occasions did the surgeon-physician intrude—and then his accomplishments were not praiseworthy—for which not himself but the customs of the times and the degradation of women were to blame. Hippocrates, whose mother was a midwife, and he the son of a line of physicians, knew very little about childbirth. He thought