MANAGEMENT OF LABOR. 361 



rageously. Should the practitioner be compelled, for the sake of quiet, 

 to prescribe some remedy, he should follow the advice of Mauriceau, 

 and, in the first place, make a bargain with the patient, obtain 

 from her as much time as possible, and promise her that, if at such 

 an hour the pains do not return, he will then cause them to begin 

 again; then, when the hour agreed upon arrives, if the pains continue 

 to be still weak, take care that the article to be made use of cannot 

 be procured except from some considerable distance; that the person 

 sent to bring it be a dull messenger, who will be apt to lose his way; 

 let it be some sort of wood, or bark, or root, or at least some hard 

 substance. When the remedy at length arrives, it must be pul- 

 verised or rasped for a long time; after Avhich it should be boiled 

 for several hours. In the next place the liquid must have time to 

 cool; it is next passed through a piece of linen, something more is 

 to be added, and then it should be boiled over again; at last it is 

 given to the patient, and as three or four hours are necessary for it 

 to produce its effect, it is easy to see that we may in this way gain 

 more than half a day, and that within that interval the pains will 

 rarely fail to resume their natural course. 



848. In certain cases the labor becomes slow, because the con- 

 tractions are difficult, extremely painful, unequal or' partial. The 

 first mentioned case ordinarily depends upon plethora, either local 

 or general, which is the cause why the uterine fibres, engorged with 

 blood, and as it were stupified, cannot contract with suitable energy; 

 women who are sl,rong, robust, sanguine, and very muscular, are 

 most liable to this state of things, which is known by a feeling of 

 general uneasiness, weight and distress felt in the hypogastrium and 

 pelvis, a highly colored skin, and especially by the pulse, which is 

 either strong and large, or contracted, small and hard; in this case, 

 bleeding frtim the arm, by means of the depletion it occasions, fre- 

 quently succeeds in restoring to the pains all necessary activity. 



The second case may be met with alone, or concurrently with the 

 former; and as its cause is an exalted sensibility, whether natural 

 or accidental, of the whole economy, or of the sexual organs in par- 

 ticular, it is proper after bleeding, if that has been deemed useful, 

 to have recourse to baths, to the mildest anodynes, and even to the 

 thebaic preparations. 



The third ease is of much more frequent occurrence tl^an the gene- 

 rality of practitioners suppose, and I can hardly comprehend why 

 the authors make scarce any mention of it in the treatise put into the 

 hands of students. The work of Wigan, which is highly esteemed 

 in the north, proves that these contractions have fixed the attention 

 of the German accoucheurs in a very special manner: among us 

 32 



