OF TRUE PREGNANCY. 115 



the lower limbs, are often seen to be infiltrated, covered with varices, 

 and affected with considerable pain; pains that may depend upon the 

 compression of nerves belonging to the lumbar and sacral plexuses. 



298. The pelvis relaxes, and its articulations, so firm and solid, 

 change so much, as in some women to become quite movable. 

 Avicenna, Aetius, Fernel, and most of the ancients had doubtless ob- 

 served it, for they placed rigidity of the symphyses among the causes 

 of difficult labor: this opinion however was pretty generally aban- 

 doned about the time of Pare; for S. Pineau, vigorously opposed by 

 the surgeons of Paris for having maintained it, never could convince 

 them of it, until he exhibited the body of a newly delivered woman 

 who had been executed. Since then, Bertin and Bouvart, in a cele- 

 brated thesis; Smellie, Levret, Plessman, Piet, Desault, M. Boyer, 

 Baudelocque, Beclard, Chaussier, Madame Boivin, &c., have ad- 

 mitted the softening of the pelvic articulations: some as a constant 

 occurrence; others as an exception; some as a state proper to facili- 

 tate parturition, as a wise precaution of nature; others as a dan- 

 gerous disease. At present the existence of the fact cannot be 

 doubted, and all the questions relating to this long debated point are 

 of easy solution. Reason indicates, and observation proves that the 

 ligamentous bands of the pelvis become more soft and supple in 

 many pregnant women; and that, in common with all the surround- 

 ing parts, they contain a larger quantity of fluid; but it is impossible 

 for such an afflux of fluids to take place without the articular surfaces 

 being separated. This process, however, is so moderate in a ma- 

 jority of cases, that neither the woman nor the accoucheur perceive 

 it. Smellie has seen it carried to such an extent that the bones 

 could be made to ride over each other; Denman also mentions cases 

 of considerable separation; Madame Boivin says it is not uncommon 

 to find a distance of four, six, eight, ten, and even twelve lines be- 

 tween the pubes, and naturalists are aware that in some of the mam- 

 miferae, the bones of the pelvis, too narrow to permit the birth to 

 take place, separate so widely during gestation, as to be in a manner 

 lost in the soft parts. 



299. In these cases of extreme softening, standing and walking, 

 which in some individuals are both fatiguing and painful at the close 

 of pregnancy, may produce inflammation and suppuration of the 

 symphyses, numerous examples of which are upon record; in these 

 cases too it is right, as Baudelocque teaches, to class their mobility 

 among the pathological alterations: on the other hand, we may con- 

 ceive that in a slightly contracted pelvis, such a softening may to a 

 certain extent have a beneficial effect upon the labor, as has been 

 asserted by several authors; but for promoting this softening, is it 



