Girdles : their origin and development, particularly with regard to their use as charms in medicine, and midwifery / by Walter J. Dilling, M.B., Ch. B., lecturer in pharmacology, Aberdeen University.

  • Dilling, Walter James, 1886-1950
Date:
1914
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Girdles : their origin and development, particularly with regard to their use as charms in medicine, and midwifery / by Walter J. Dilling, M.B., Ch. B., lecturer in pharmacology, Aberdeen University. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    I do not propose to do more than merely mention the “ Ceinture de Chastete ”—the girdle which the crusaders sometimes locked on their ladies before leaving them for long periods. They were made of iron, and possessed a perineal band or pad which was locked in position. 6. Girdles used during pregnancy and confinement.—The application of the girdle during pregnancy and labour forms a most curious problem in ethnology. It is well known that in most nationalities the popular conception is that everything should be unloosened in these contingencies; thus, husbands must not sit with their legs crossed, doors must be opened, knots of all kinds undone—as is the case even among the Kayans of Borneo, where, before confinement, the prospective mother must refrain from tying knots1—and the hair must often be loosened. Similar, if somewhat exaggerated, customs are said to have been followed in Persia, where, when a woman was about to lie in, the schoolmasters were requested to give liberty to the boys, and birds confined in cages were permitted to escape.2 History does not inform us whether all the schoolboys were granted holidays on such occasions; certainly, were this the case, their lessons must have proceeded in a disjointed fashion. On account of the antiquity of the girdle custom, and the fact that during pregnancy and labour the girdle is sometimes applied and sometimes loosened—which resembles the knot untying—it is meantime impossible to make any definite statements as to its original source or import. It is most probable, I think, that it arose as an offshoot of the sacrificial girdle, and may therefore be considered as an instance of sympathetic magic, or, in other words, the ascription of marvellous powers to the clothes or relics of departed saints, a custom familiar in Mohammedan and Buddhist, as well as Christian communities. But one must not forget that it is quite conceivable that the girdle idea originated as a simple means of applying vis a tergo in a manner obviously rational to the mind of primitive man. It has also occurred to the writer that the old legends of the sun giving birth to all nature from the womb of mother earth at the commencement of his northern circuit may have been the source of the application of the girdle in pregnancy ; but in the chaos of a 1 “Customs of the World,” edited by W. Hutchinson, London, 1912, p. 201. 2 J. C. Lettsom, “History of the Origin of Medicine,” London, 1778, p. 48 (F.N.).