OF LABOUR AND ITS SEQUELS. 



panied by great exertions of the woman herself; al- 

 most always too by shivering, shrieking, tremor of the 

 knees, &c. The head of the child, now on the verge of 

 birth, penetrates, and the face first appears, the vertex 

 usually remaining under the arch of the pubes and the 

 rest of the head in the mean time being farther propelled 

 and revolving around the impacted vertex as around an 

 axis. Thus the child comes into the world, in the midst 

 of a red discharge, consisting of a second portion of 

 the liquor amnii mixed with blood. 



605. Soon after the expulsion of the child, the after- 

 labour commences, attended by a painful though much 

 less violent exertion, and followed by another he- 

 morrhage from that part of the cavity of the womb * to 

 which the placenta had adhered by means of the de- 

 cidua crassa.f 



606. Immediately that both burthens are expelled, 

 the uterus begins gradually to contract, until it ac- 

 quires its original form and very nearly its original 

 dimensions. 



607. For about a week after labour, the lochia are 



some extremely rare cases) so far surpass, even under the most favourable 

 circumstances, the pains experienced by domestic brutes in their labours, that 

 I trust no one who has frequently witnessed labours in both, will seriously doubt 

 the immense difference between the two in this respect. 



* B. S. Albums, Tab. titer, gravid, vij. 



Wm. Hunter, Anat. of the gravid uterus. Tab. x. fig. 3. 



f Nic. Massam and all siuce his time denominate this portion of the womb, 

 during or shortly after pregnancy, the cotyledons, from the analogous appear- 

 ance observable in the gravid uterus of sheep or goats, in which similar cavities 

 (acetabula) exist, receiving what arc called the glandular corpuscles of the 

 chorion that correspond with the foetal portion of the human placenta. 



Whatever was hollow, like an acetabulum, was called xotvXti by the ancients. 

 Vide J. Cammerarii Comm. uttiusque lingua, p. 256. 384. 



2 c 



