Labor among primitive peoples : Showing the development of the obstetric science of to-day, from the natural and instinctive customs of all races, civilized and savage, past and present / By Geo. J. Engelmann.

  • Engelmann, George J. (George Julius), 1847-1903.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Labor among primitive peoples : Showing the development of the obstetric science of to-day, from the natural and instinctive customs of all races, civilized and savage, past and present / By Geo. J. Engelmann. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Lamar Soutter Library, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

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    sister science to medicine; why should we not take one step farther? Why should ethnology not prove an aid in the development of other branches of medicine as well? Although a new departure, I may say that Ethnology will add greatly to the study of obstetric science and its thor- ough understanding; it will be a guide to the study of Midwifery, as Comparative Anatomy is to that of Anatomy, and moreover a necessity to its complete understanding. I have presented the result of my investigations by rea- son of their intense interest to me, and because a compari- son of the crude methods of Primitive Peoples and Peoples of former civilizations with the teachings of scientific obstetrics of to-day are amusing and interesting, but above all instructive and important. If I have erred, it is my en- thusiasm which has carried me away. So much for the Subject, now for the Arrangement of the work. The chapters follow, not in logical order, but in the succession in which chance presented the material, and the order in which the articles appeared—the first one on Posture, in the Transactions of the Aonericaii Gynecologi- cal Society of 1880; the second, third and fourth in the American Journal of Obstetrics from April, 1881, to July, 1882 ; and the fifth in tlie Courier of Medicine of St. Louis for March and May, 1882. In the arrangement of this volume circumstances neces- sitated the faulty order, which the reader cannot overlook^ yet will, I trust, generously ])ardon. Let us glance hastily over some of the more striking features here presented: Is it not a matter of interest to see how the 'nioon, the world over, is connected with the menstruation of woman ; how, in France, in past centuries our montlily flow, the German Monatliclie Reinigung, was called the tribute which woman renders the nioonf'' the Indian speaks of a woman in this state as having moon in the ass—so the world over. Again, the idea of cleansing^ purifying, is expressed in the German monat- liclie Reinigiing^'' whilst the natives of Africa, of India, and of our Western territories, still consider the female at