PROGNOSIS. 341 



bed and plays the patient for a week or two! Parturition is a mere 

 nothing to country women, who cannot spare time to drag them- 

 selves, methodically, from the bed to the sofa, and vice versa. Who 

 has not seen soldiers' wives bring the most robust and finest children 

 into the world, withput in any respect deviating from their active 

 modes of living, or without ceasing by forced marches to follow their 

 regiments? Even in the large cities it is not uncommon for poor 

 women to go on foot to a midwife while the pains are upon them, 

 and return home the next day in spite of Hygieine, their poverty not 

 allowing them to attend to themselves for more than three or four days. 

 I, like Roussel, have seen a yoimg girl who found means to conceal 

 from her parents both the humiliating proofs of her weakness and 

 the operation that delivered her from it. What practitioner is there 

 who has not had an opportunity of making the same observation? 

 The pregnancies of these poor creatures being illegitimate, it would 

 seem as if they had no right to be sick. But these remarks in no 

 wise prove that women ought to be left to themselves during partu- 

 rition. In the first place it is false to say that parturition in animals 

 never requires any assistance, arid is never accompanied with serious 

 accidents: sows, mares, cows, &;c., are even, in general, quite ill in 

 bringing forth their young, and country people are by no means ig- 

 norant of the fact. Does it follow, because some women, when com- 

 pelled by imperious motives to deliver themselves in private, or 

 without taking the least precaution, escape from the serious dangers 

 with which they supposed themselves to be threatened, that all 

 others may imitate them without exposure to more imminent perils? 

 If there are some whose health is not disturbed by such painful 

 experiments, how many others are there who become the victims of 

 their temerity? Because one man falls from the top of a roof with- 

 out breaking his bones, does it follow that we should advise others 

 to go to the house top to have the pleasure of tumbling down to 

 the ground? Will people never be tired of referring us back to a 

 period of primitive nature, that every body talks about, and that no- 

 body understands? By attempting to substitute the exception for 

 the rule, we inevitably fall into absurdity, and that is what happened 

 to the elegant Roussel. If, in order to avoid the dangers of abuse, 

 it were always necessary to forego the use, what would become of 

 the human race? The business of the accoucheur, doubtless, is 

 not to put himself in nature's place where a labor is natural; but some- 

 body ought to be with tfie woman who is able to give her proper 

 directions, to foresee accidents, to recognise them, and to remedy 

 them when they do take place; to apply the resources of art when 

 necessary, and at the opportune moment; who, by the confidence 



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