78 Observations on the Natural History 



wholly inadmissible, from our present anatomical know- 

 ledge, and social observation. 



Dr. Dewees talks as lightly and familiarly of labours 

 " without pain*," as if they were the offspring of daily 

 observation. In the examination of matters of science, 

 we are necessarily restricted from all loose modes of ex- 

 pression. We are not to be indulged in tropes, and 

 figures, and flowers of rhetoric, by way of decoration to 

 our subject. I am a good deal sceptical about labours 

 without pain ; and, when I look at the immense volume 

 of female experience, as it is unfolded in every age, and 

 every nation, I am led still farther to doubt. The world 

 should, at least, have furnished one case, where the 

 throes of labour have been passed through without pain. 

 I have not, as yet, read one honest account of such a 

 case, except where the sensibilities were benumbed by 

 stupor, suspended by syncope, or annihilated by death. 



The ancient doctrines of Boerhaave make but an awk- 

 w aid appearance in their new American dress : doctrines 

 that enlightened science had committed to the stream of 



* " And of women delivered without pain, it would be idle to cite 

 them, as they must occur in every man's practice." Essay, p. 43. 



I have never met with one of these labours without pain ; and, to 

 my recollection, neither Smellie, nor Hamilton, nor Denman, nor 

 IJaudclocque, nor La Motte, nor Levret, nor Louverjat, nor Walker, 

 &c, Sec, speak of such a thing, where the body retained its sensibi- 

 lities. These men write of easy labours with little pain, and yet their 

 practice was not among savages. Were these painless cases of the 

 Essay among civilized people ! 



