LABOR-PAINS. 275 



pain by the expression. So that his opinion, which is adopted by 

 most of the English practitioners, and which Hoplvins characterises 

 as the most rational one, is very nearly the same as that of Stein and 

 Levret. 



Hay and M. Bilon have endeavored to prove that the seat of 

 labor-pain is in the cervix much more than in the body of the 

 womb; their principal argument is, that the former receives its 

 nerves from the sacral plexus, which is one of the divisions of the 

 cerebral nervous system, while the latter receives its supply from the 

 hypogastric plexus, which belongs to the ganglionic system, and 

 which has no communication with the brain. Madame Boivin, who 

 speaks from what she has experienced in her own person, advocates 

 the same idea, and thinks that the contractions of the body and fun- 

 dus of the womb are not more painful than those of the abdominal 

 muscles and bladder. 



690. If it be true that the cervix is endowed with a more acute sen- 

 sibility; receives a more abundant supply of nerves than the rest of 

 the organ, and is powerfully stretched by the contractions, and that 

 all the efforts of the uterus are directed upon that point, it is not 

 less so, that, during the strongest as well as the weakest contractions, 

 the pains are equally felt throughout the whole extent of the womb. 

 If the pressure of the foetus and the tractions exerted upon the cer- 

 vix were the only causes of pain, women ought not to suffer at all 

 after the dilatation is completed; yet, notwithstanding, their most 

 violent sufferings are experienced from that very period; and durino- 

 the delivery of the placenta, is it in the neck that we are to place the 

 seat of the pains? 



691. Others have asserted that the pains of labor are owino- to the 

 compression of organs contained within the pelvis, of the nervous 

 plexuses, for example. But when the lumbar or sacral nerves are 

 compressed, pain is felt in the limbs and not in the excavation. The 

 pains extend from above downwards, both at the beginning and end 

 of the process, and occupy the whole hypogastrium, and not mere- 

 ly the lesser basin; as long as the head remains above the superior 

 strait, where the foetus presents transversely, or when it comes by the 

 feet, we cannot refer the pains to this kind of compression. To 

 maintain, with some writers, that they depend on compression of the 

 nervous branches distributed upon the inner surface of the womb, is 

 only to advance one of those numerous assertions, hazarded without 

 proof, which are but too often met with in medical works.* 



* If, during labor, the finger be hooked in the dilating circle of the os uteri 

 and drawn so as to put it on the stretcli, a pain is produced, resembling that 



