TOO SMALL A PELVIS. 497 



SECTION 1. 



Of Regimen, as a means of enabling women with contracted pelvis 

 to be delivered without the assistance of any surgical operation. 



1109. Were it true that the strength of the fetus while enclosed 

 in its involucra is always in proportion to that of the mother, nothing 

 would be more natural, nor better indicated, than to weaken a de- 

 formed woman during tlie progress of her pregnancy. But as the 

 most robust women do not always bear vigorous childien; as those 

 ■who are naturally feeble and sickly often give birth to very stout 

 and large ones; it is to be feared that the severest diet and most 

 abundant sanguine evacuations, would only serve in such a case to 

 incapacitate the woman from supporting the operations that would 

 notwithstanding be requisite when she should fall into labor. I 

 know one person who, having been delivered twice by means 

 of art, was bled ten times, and confined to a vegetable diet dur- 

 ing her third pregnancy, with a view of retarding the growth of 

 the child; this lady was, it is true, exceedingly weakened by it, but 

 the foetus did not appear to have been afl!ected, and in parturition she 

 required the same succors as before. Another woman who had 

 two very fatiguing pregnancies, and could not be delivered until 

 after three days of painful labor, and then by means of the for- 

 ceps, also became pregnant for the third time, found herself less in- 

 commoded than usual, and was, nevertheless, delivered without as- 

 sistance, and without difficulty, of a child sensibily smaller than the 

 preceding ones. I am well aware that practitioners worthy of credit 

 assert that they have obtained directly contrary results, and I can 

 well conceive, as a general rule, that by exhausting the woman, 

 the growth of her offspring will be retarded. But there are so 

 many exceptions to this rule, and what we gain on the one hand 

 so disadvantageously compensated by the loss of resources of which 

 we deprive ourselves on the other, that I would scarcely venture to 

 recommend such a course except to persons affected with a very slight 

 degree of contraction, and in whom delivery might, in fact, take place 

 spontaneously, should the head of the foetus not be very large. 



SECTION 2. 



Of Abortion, brought on for the purpose of rendering symphyseo- 

 tomy or the cesarian operation unnecessary. 



1110. It was about the middle of the last century that the most 



43* 



