EUTOCIA. 285 



ARTICLE II. 



Of Eutocia, or Simple, Fortunate, or Spontaneous Labor 

 {natural labor of the French writers). 



In order that labor may terminate without foreign aid, a conside- 

 rable number of conditions are required. 



713. On the part of the ivoman, there must be no fault nor de- 

 formity in the pelvis; no serious affection of the womb, no scirrhus 

 nor old cicatrices; the organ must enjoy a certain degree of energy; 

 the general powers of the system must not have been exhausted, 

 either by a profuse hemorrhage, or any long continued disease; 

 there must be no affection, making it dangerous for the woman to 

 give herself fully up to the efforts she is compelled to make, and no 

 accident must supervene during the labor. 



714. On the part of the child, it is important that the occipito- 

 coccygeal axis should present one of its extremities to the straits, 

 that the fostus should descend with the head, the feet, the knees or 

 the breech foremost; that it should not be hydrocephalous, gibbous 

 or ascitic; not of a size disproportioned to the capacity of the pelvis; 

 that there be not two heads attached to a single trunk, or two trunks 

 to a single head, nor two children united together in any manner 

 whatever. 



715. Notwithstanding the number of these conditions, it is a rare 

 thing for them not to be met with; for spontaneous child-birth forms 

 a large proportion of the sum total of labors. We find in Merri- 

 man's Synoptical Table, that out of 1800 cases 1746 might have 

 terminated spontaneously, since the child presented by the vertex in 

 1654 instances, four times by the lower extremities, twenty-three 

 by the face, forty-two by the hip, and that in twenty-three cases the 

 labor was only regarded as dystocial because they were multiparous 

 pregnancies. 20,357 labors took place at the Maternite at Paris 

 from 1797 to the end of 1811; of these 20,183 were natural. Out 

 of 1897 that took place under the superintendence of Dr. Bland, 

 1860 were brought to a conclusion by the hand of nature. It is seen, 

 therefore, that at the Maison d'Accouchement at Paris, difficult la- 

 bors have occurred in the proportion of one to sixty-two; and at the 

 Westminster Dispensary and Middlesex Hospital, according to Mer- 

 riman and Bland, out of forty-three labors, forty-two terminate spon- 

 taneously. 



Madame Lachapelle, in her new tables, divides the labors that 

 have fallen under her notice into two periods; the first, extending 



25* 



