276 LABOR-PAINS. 



Thus the essential cause of labor-pain is wholly unknown; it is 

 a question in physiology which deserves and requires new research- 

 es. What is demonstrated by observation is, that all parts of the 

 womb, either unitedly or singly, may be the seat of pain during la- 

 bor; that in certain cases, the stretching of the neck concurs, perhaps, 

 more than all other causes in its production, and that pressure upon 

 the neighboring parts is not always unconcerned in it. 



682. There is another long debated question relative to the in- 

 tefmittence of the pains of labor. A. Petit says, that were not the 

 pain to cease after it had set in, or if there were only one single pain, 

 the woman would sink under it, and could not bear it; whereas, 

 being reduced as it is into fragments, the sum of her sufferings is real- 

 ly lessened; in other words, the pains of parturition are intermittent 

 because they are not continuous, for that is all the explanation given 

 by A. Petit. A physician whom Millot opposes with much warmth 

 has entered more deeply into the question, asserting that the cause 

 of the intermittence of the pains is found in the resistance offered 

 by the ovum to the contractions of the womb. Others have since 

 endeavored to explain the facts as follows: when the womb contracts 

 with much force, say they, the nerves between its different strata, or 

 even on its inner surface, being compressed by the external surface 

 of the ovum, soon produce a degree of numbness in them, that neces- 

 sarily puts a stop to the contraction. 



But the pains, in these cases, ought to be very long and very near 

 to each other at the commencement of the labor, instead of being 

 so fugacious and far apart, as the contractions are then extremely 

 feeble; on the other hand, they ought at the close to be shorter and 

 less frequent, inasmuch as the compression is then sudden and 

 most violent; nor are the pains that accompany the delivery of the 

 secundines, or the after-pains that follow delivery, and which still pre- 

 serve the intermittent type, explained in a manner at all more satis- 

 factory, under this hypothesis. 



693. Buffon thought that the cessation of each pain was due to 

 the detachment of ihe placenta; that is to say, according to this 

 celebrated man, the object of each contraction of the uterus is 

 to detach a small portion of the after-birth, and as soon as this de- 

 tachment takes place, the pain, like the contraction, must cease for 

 a moment. Two remarks suffice to show the litde value of such a 

 supposition. The placenta sometimes comes away before the fostus, 

 and the pains are not on that account less intermittent until the labor 

 is concluded. In other cases the placenta retains its adherence even 



which is felt during the grinding pains. — The most intense pain of parturition 

 is the result of the extension of the vagina, the perineum and labia. — M. 



