OF LABOR. 251 



organs of the mother. This definition, in the first place, is incon- 

 venient, in being too long; and then it comprises only natural labors, 

 and does not embrace either precocious or retarded births, nor cases 

 in which the child is dead in utero. According to M. Desormeaux, 

 who has properly felt the insufficiency of the principles of Levret, 

 Astruc and Baudelocque, " labor is a function which consists in 

 the expulsion of a fcetus from the womb, in which it grew during 

 the whole time of gestation." By substituting for the words opera- 

 tion and escape those of function and expulsion, this able practi- 

 tioner has rendered his definition incomparably better than any that 

 existed before. However, were it of any great consequence in prac- 

 tice to adopt one definition rather than another, I should prefer 

 simply to say, that labor is a function that consists in the expulsion 

 of the ovum from the mother'' s organs. 



641. By making use of the word operation, physicians have gra- 

 dually become accustomed to see in labor a phenomenon almost 

 wholly foreign to the economy; and thence their eagerness to ter- 

 minate an action which did not require their assistance; by admit- 

 ting, on the contrary, that labor is a function, we feel ourselves natu- 

 rally prompted to let nature act, whom we assist, but whose place 

 we carefully abstain from taking, except in cases where we have 

 beforerhand ascertained with mathematical precision that the re- 

 sources of nature are incompetent. 



642. Classification. Many plans have been proposed for the 

 classification of labors; Mauriceau, adopting the sentiment of Hip- 

 pocrates, calls those natural labors in which the child's head pre- 

 sents, and which terminates without assistance; all others he calls 

 preternatural. Peu makes use of the word laborious instead of 

 preternatural. De la Motte describes them as natural, non-natural, 

 preternatural and untoward. Soon afterwards were admitted, under 

 the title of natural labors, all those in which the head or the breech 

 presented; under that of laborious, those which, notwithstanding the 

 favorable position of the fcetus, are so long protracted that we are 

 obliged to assist them; all those were called preternatural in which 

 neither the head nor the breech presented to the strait. Smellie 

 modified this classification, and said, " I call that a natural labor in 

 which the head presents, and the woman is delivered by her pains 

 and the assistance commonly given: but should the case be so tedious 

 and lingering that we are obliged to use extraordinary force in 

 stretching the parts, extracting with the forceps, or (to save the 

 mother's life) in opening the head and delivering with the crotchet, 

 I distinguish it by the appellation of laborious: and in the preter- 

 natural, comprehend all those cases in which the child is brought 



