"Laying pit and boxes together"

[Joel S. Berson]

[This is as transcribed by someone else.  It may have been
modernized, e.g. in capitalization; and the reference to "p. 10" may
be extraneous.  I leave it to the experts to choose what headword(s)
this should be placed under.]
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Philip Thicknesse
Man-Midwifery Analysed: and the Tenency of that Practice Detected and Exposed
1764
London: R. Davis

The dangerous consequnces [sic; as sent to me] of iron instruments,
almost constantly used by men midwives, and which often destroy the
life of the child or mother, or both, and the certainty of rendering
the woman's person less agreeable, and often loathsome to her
husband, ought to have great weight with women and their husbands
also, provided the matter of delicacy, decency and modesty, was out
of the question: and yet it is no uncommon thing to hear (p. 10) a
male midwife practitioner call the greatest calamity and misfortune
that can befall a woman, by the ludicrous epithet of Laying Pit and
Boxes together.

page 11

not in OED2 "laying pit and boxes together"
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Joel

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