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CHAPTER V. 



Of Labor, 



When gestation has passed through all the stages, when the ovum 

 has attained its last degree of maturity, and tlie organism of the foetus 

 is sufficiently perfect to anable it to live independently of the mother, 

 the birth of man takes place, and this is the phenomenon, the fifth of 

 the great function of reproduction, which is called labor. 



It has been recommended at different times to replace the word 

 accouchement derived from ad and cubare, placed near to, by that 

 of parturition, derived from partus, partio, parturire, or by that of 

 child-birth, puerperium; but as custom cannot give place to a false 

 or erroneous acceptation, these different substitutes have not been 

 adopted.* 



Definitions. Levret has defined labor as a natural operation, truly 

 mechanical, and susceptible of geometrical demonstration; which is 

 neither figuratively nor really true. Astruc, imbued with the same 

 notions, thought he could reduce the art of delivery to the solution 

 of the following problem: " An extensible cavity of a certain capa- 

 city being given, to extract therefrom a flexible body of a given 

 length and size, through an opening which is dilatable to a certain 

 extent." As if it were a matter of indifference whether the foetus 

 should be extracted artificially, or whether its expulsion should be 

 left to the powers of nature ! Bandelocque also has said that labor 

 is a purely mechanical operation, subjected to the laws of gravity 

 and motion; as if it were possible to make precise calculations of 

 organic actions, by reasoning upon the laws that govern the physical 

 ■world! In asserting " that labor is nothing more than the passing 

 of the child and its appendages from the womb," M. Maygrier also 

 employs a faulty definition, inasmuch as it does not express the ac- 

 tion which occasions this passage. Neither is it correct to say with 

 Madame Boivin, that labor is the emission, expulsion, or excretion 

 of a living child at full term, together with its appendages, occasion- 

 ed by the contraction of the uterus, and the disposition of the genital 



* la France. 



