Trade Secret
I was listening to the radio as I was driving the car – the programme was Woman’s Hour ( on BBC Radio 4) and they were talking about obstectric methods in the C17th. Before that time, apparently, there had been no safe way to deliver babies in difficult cases and many newborn children were lost. Often women died in childbirth, in terrible pain. Sometimes both mother and child would be lost, despite the best efforts of the doctor and midwife. Obstetricians could find ways of removing the child from the womb, but not alive – the detail are too gruesome to mention.
Then the Chamberlens, a family of Huguenot refugees, hit upon the idea of using forceps to deliver the child. (The Huguenots were Protestants who had fled religious persecution in France.) Rich women paid large sums of money to have the help of doctor Chamberlen. He had a competitive advantage over all the other doctors. If mothers went to him there was a much greater chance their child would be delivered safely. The obstetric forceps were a trade secret, kept for 100 years in the family. Dr. Chamberlen would arrive with a large gilt-covered box containing the wonderful apparatus. It looked very impressive but no one knew it just contained a simple forceps! And so the Chamberlen family became rich on their secret.
I found this to be a blood chilling piece of information – far more so than the gruesome details of delivery methods prior to this period. Just think: hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of babies, whose lives could have been saved by this wonderful and simple invention, died at birth. Mothers suffered excruciating pain and some died. And all because the Chamberlen family would not share their secret!
They may have been seeking religious freedom in England but obviously their religion did not impact on their daily lives. It did not apply to the task of money making. How calculating! How grasping! How unchristian!
And then I thought: we are in a similar situation. We who follow Jesus Christ believe in a Gospel which can bring salvation to the world. It is good news for all people: and yet millions live and die without ever hearing his name. ( It is said that 97% of the world’s population have heard of Coca Cola whereas only about 75% have heard of the name of Jesus). We may not be actually guilty of preventing others from knowing the Saviour, but are we doing all we can to spread the knowledge of his salvation to others? It is a challenge to all who claim to follow Jesus Christ.
