116 OF TRUE PREGNANCY. 



proper, in accordance with Pineau, to repose any confidence upon 

 the action of baths, cataplasms, and other means of the same nature? 

 Is it possible, without any bad effect, to increase it by mechanical 

 efforts, such as dilating efforts for example? Can we believe with 

 Denman, and others, that the pressure exerted by the child's head 

 has something to do with its production, when the labor is violent, 

 and yet progresses slowly? 



According to Baudelocque, the ligaments alone share in this ope- 

 ration; MM. Piet, and Chaussier are wrong in teaching that the 

 cartilaginous plates are equally concerned in it. 



The symphysis of the pubis, being in almost all respects similar to 

 the articulation of the bodies of two vertebrae, explains why the soft- 

 ening affects it more frequently, and always to a greater degree 

 than the posterior symphyses; and how it happens that in a majority 

 of women who have borne children, its surfaces are commonly rather 

 more distantly separated than they were before pregnancy took 

 place. 



300. The consistency even of the bones of the pelvis is some- 

 times so altered, that they become flexible. Weidman relates a re- 

 markable instance of this kind: the inferior strait was so contracted, 

 that the caesarian operation appeared to be indispensably necessary; 

 but in attempting to pass up his hand, he perceived that the ischia 

 and the pubic arch yielded like cartilage, and the labor terminated 

 without an operation. M. Hofmeister has lately published a case 

 nearly similar, and not less curious. According to Burns and other 

 English accoucheurs, this state of things often exists as a symptom 

 of the dangerous disease they describe under the title of malacosteon. 



§. II. Sympathetic Phenomena, and Mational 



Si^ns. 



301. The numerous material modifications that have just been 

 enumerated, act more or less upon the rest of the system, and give 

 rise to what are by agreement denominated the general, common, 

 rational, vague, uncertain, and doubtful signs of gestation. 



302. It is a common notion, long ago inculcated by Hippocrates 

 and Galen, that a fruitful copulation is accompanied with much live- 

 lier enjoyment than an ordinary coitus, and that it is felt at the same 

 moment by both the parties. According to Aristotle the copulative 

 organ of the male is withdrawn less moist than commonly from the 

 female organs, and the seminal fluid does not escape from them. 

 Immediately after coition the two beings fall into a state of languor, 

 of weakness, of uncommon sadness; the woman feels a disposition 

 to faintness, to syncope, to have horripilation, colic, and a sort of 



