Hints on obstetric practice, with illustrations. Part 1 / by John Bremner.

  • Bremner, John (Writer on business networks)
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hints on obstetric practice, with illustrations. Part 1 / by John Bremner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    from their childhood, our mothers had, like the Indian women, carried loads like beasts of burden, and those over the longest journeys and highest mountains, and swam the broadest rivers, and galloped about for months, and even years of their lives, as¬ tride on their horses backs, we should have taxed them as lightly in stepping into the world as an Indian pappoose does its mother, who ties her horse under the shade of a tree for half an hour, and before night overtakes her companions with her infant in her arms, —which has often been the case.”” Dr Prichard in his work, entitled “ Researches into the Phy¬ sical History of Mankind”, vol. i. p. 112, quoting from that of Dr Rush, “ On the Diseases and Medicine of the North Ameri¬ can Indians””, says, “ their labours are short, and accompanied with ; and after a few days they return to their usual em- 18, after contrasting the opinions advanced by writers on the physical .qualities of females in tropical countries. Dr Prichard states, “ the ease with which the women of the negro race are said to bear children, is by no means a circumstance pe¬ culiar to them. It has been observed among the females of every savage race.”’”’ A somewhat different, and perhaps a more correct view of the case, is however taken by Dr E. Rigby, in his Introductory Lec¬ ture to Midwifery, delivered at St Thomas”’s Hospital, and re¬ corded in No, 140 of the London Medical and Surgical Journal. From certain facts ascertained and related by that gentleman, it does not appear that parturition amongst tribes in a natural and savage state, is of such short duration, and so exempt from suffer¬ ing, as has been generally represented, chiefly from the circum¬ stance disclosed, that it is the boast of female fortitude to suffer in silence, and only to retire from the presence of her companions when the conflict draws near a close. It is not, however, it is conceived, so much to the rapidity, or duration of the process, together with its release from pain amongst the migratory tribes, to which our attention ought to be so closely directed, as to the consecutive state of the patients, viz. their almost immediate hardihood and capability of enduring fatigue, as well as future exemption from disease. In farther reflecting on the subject, the question naturally arises, are the causes advanced by Mr Gatlin, and slightly touched on by Drs Prichard and Rigby, sufficient to account for the occurrences de¬ scribed.? With deference to the opinions of those whose situations have placed them in much more favourable circumstances for ob¬ servation, the fundamental cause seems to reside in the equally balanced state of the system, in consequence of its freedom from phlogistic action, which prevails in an inverse ratio as amongst civilized nations, as also disease in general,—effects which un¬ doubtedly derive their origin from the habits of life related by little pain ployment. At p. 1