“As a result, how often do we see our matrons dreading the process of child-bearing, as if it were an abnormal and destructive one; fatigued and exhausted by a short walk, or ordinary household cares; choosing houses with special reference to freedom from one extra flight of stairs, and commonly debarred the one great maternal privilege of nourishing their own offspring. These are they who furnish employment for the gynecologist, and who fill our homes with invalids and sufferers.”
Understanding and following physiological laws, pregnancy ought to be as free from pathological symptoms, and parturition as void of suffering with American women as with any on earth, or even with the lower animals.
Dr. Dewees says: “Pain in childbirth is a morbid symptom; it is a perversion of nature caused by modes of living not consistent with the most healthy condition of the system, and a regimen which would insure a completely healthy condition might be counted on with certainty to do away with such pain.”
The great English scientist, Professor Huxley, says: “We are indeed, fully prepared to believe that the bearing of children may and ought to become as free from danger and long debility to the civilized woman as it is to the savage.”
The following paragraphs from one of the essays in Dr. Montgomery’s classical work on Pregnancy, give practical details of cases in illustration of the belief in painless parturition.
“In a letter to me Dr. Douglas states that he was called about 6 A. M., Sept. 26, 1828, to attend a Mrs. D., residing on Eccles St.
“On his arrival he found the house in the utmost confusion, and was told that the child had been born before the messenger was dispatched for the doctor. From the lady herself he learned that, about half an hour previously, she had been awakened from a natural sleep by the alarm of a daughter about five years old, who slept with her.
“This alarm was occasioned by the little girl feeling the movements, and hearing the cries of an infant in bed. To the mother’s great surprise she had brought forth her child without any consciousness of the fact.
“A lady of great respectability, the wife of a peer of the realm, was actually delivered once in her sleep; she immediately awakened her husband, being alarmed to find one more in bed than there was before.
“I have elsewhere mentioned the case of a patient of mine who bore eight children without ever having labor pains. Her deliveries were so sudden and void of sensible effect that in more than one instance they took place under most awkward circumstances, but without any suffering.”