MANAGEMENT OF LABOR. 359 



that bird was secured to the sole of her corresponding foot; some- 

 times again she was to have the belly rubbed with viper's fat and 

 snake's gall, or the navel was covered with a very hot snake or rabbit 

 skin; finally, some saffron placed on the hip, some cabalistic sentence 

 on the forehead, the breast or pit of the stomach, and a thousand 

 other absurdities of the same kind, were also frequently made use of. 



As M. Desormeaux remarks, it would be almost puerile to make 

 the least mention of such nonsense, provided we were not oblio-ed, 

 from a human respect, to reply to certain folks who hold ihem to 

 be great secrets, and in certain cases to show, like Van Swieten, 

 some condescension for the weaknesses of females. These reme- 

 dies at least will do no mischief, and may perhaps prevent the ad- 

 ministration of some less inoffensive remedy. 



The aromatic waters, as balm and mint waters, the tinctures of 

 canella, of cloves, all sorts of compounds, and all sorts of alcoholic 

 elixirs have each had their day, and many women who used them have 

 fallen victims to their imprudence. Purgatives and emetics have 

 had great vogue even among medical men, and are not yet wholly 

 forgotten by the vulgar. Preparations of manna, or of senna, to 

 ■which, by way of corrective, was added lemon or orange juice, were 

 very much used in the time of Mauriceau; but, without denying 

 that such preparations may possess the faculty of restoring the pains 

 in some particular cases, and without fearing their action on the 

 alimentary canal, so much as some physicians of our day do, it is 

 notwithstanding, manifest, that, if they ever may become dangerous, 

 it is chiefly to women in labor that they are likely to be so. 



845. Purgative articles, given in the form of clysters, are not 

 attended with the same disadvantages, and, in fact, they appear to 

 have been employed in this way with some advantage; amongst 

 others, the decoction of senna, whose operation is generally accom- 

 panied with smart colic, is perhaps not to be wholly neglected. It 

 is at least certain that I have, at the Maternite of Tours, seen it im- 

 press upon the contractions an energy that could scarcely be attri- 

 buted to mere chance. Bleeding, baths, antispasmodics, opiates, 

 borax, and many other articles, are, in the opinion of some persons, 

 possessed of very decided oxytocic properties; but in order not to 

 be misled in this manner, we should be careful not to confound 

 what depends on time, circumstances, or chance, with the real 

 effects of the means employed, and never lose sight of the possibility 

 of those singular coincidences which often put to flight the most skil- 

 ful combinations. 



846. Labor sometimes progresses with extreme slowness, and 

 mav last from two to five or even eight days, without there being 



