70 Observations on the Natural History 



Obstetric history expands to our view many in- 

 stances of judicious, well- managed efforts to save the 

 child on the death of the mother ; but their ill success 

 has devolved the iteration of these efforts on those who 

 can believe, that the foetus can live without the constant 

 renovation of the oxigenous stimulus. 



We have no materials of which the theory of the 

 continuity of circulation, between the mother and child, 

 can be constructed. Injections, thinner than red- blood, 

 have not, as yet, found their way from one to the other. 

 And, were the circulation continuous, and immediate, 

 a lifeless mother could not support a living child. The 

 alimental supply before birth, as before observed, is by 

 means of the placenta, acting as a gland, as it is subse- 

 quently furnished by the mammae. 



Dr. Dewees, in his thesis, the mirror from which all 

 the features of his doctrine are reflected to us, adopts 

 the hvpothesis, " that they (pregnancy and parturition) 

 ought to be considered as diseases, according to the 

 opinion of Dr. Rush, one of the greatest ornaments of 

 medicine, in the present or any antecedent age. This 

 he infers from the necessity, in too many instances, a 

 few cases only excepted, of our being obliged to miti- 

 gate their violence, or shorten their duration*." 



* " Pregnancy." " Though a natural alteration of the animal 

 economy, which every female seems originally formed to undergo, 

 and hence not to be considered as a state of diseasi " &c. 



Encyclopedia. 



