Childbirth being a healthful physiological condition, is usually neither attended nor followed by mischievous results. Occasionally, however, the mother suffers in consequence of the prolonged or difficult character of her labor. The longer the labor the greater the danger to both mother and child. Thus childbirth pangs prolonged beyond twenty-four or thirty-six hours are much more apt to be attended with danger or followed by disease than those terminated within a few hours.
The following aphorisms were laid down by the late distinguished Professor James Y. Simpson, namely:—
The mother is more liable to suffer under diseases of the womb after long than after short labors. The child for some time after birth is more liable to disease and death, in proportion as the labor has been longer in its duration. First labors are longer in duration than subsequent ones, and in a proportionate degree more complicated and dangerous to mother and child. Male births are longer in duration than female births, and in a proportionate degree more complicated and dangerous to mother and child.
Many tedious confinements, however, are happily terminated without the slightest injury to mother or child. Whenever the labor has been unusually prolonged, unusual care and caution should be exercised in the treatment of the mother and infant for many weeks after the event.
One of the most distressing affections to which women are exposed from childbirth is
PUERPERAL MANIA.
This is a variety of insanity which attacks some women shortly after childbirth, or at the period of weaning a child. The period of attack is uncertain, as it may manifest itself first in a very few days, or not for some months after the confinement. Its duration is likewise very variable. In most instances a few weeks restore the patient to herself; but there are many cases where judicious treatment for months is required, and there are a few where the mental alienation is permanent, and the wife and mother is never restored to her sanity.
The question has been much discussed, Whether such a condition is to be imputed to a hereditary tendency to insanity in the family, and also whether a mother who has had such an attack is liable to transmit to her children, male or female, any greater liability to mental disease. We are well aware what deep importance the answers to these inquiries have to many a parent; and in forming our replies, we are guided not only by our own experience, but by the recorded opinion of those members of our profession who have given the subject close and earnest attention. To the first query, the reply must be made that in one-half, or nearly one-half, of the cases of this variety of insanity there is traceable a hereditary tendency to aberration of mind. Usually one or more of the direct progenitors, or of the near relatives of the patient, will be found to have manifested unmistakable marks of unsoundness of mind. In the remaining one-half cases no such tendency can be traced, and in these it must be presumed that the mania is a purely local and temporary disorder of the brain. The incurable cases are usually found in the first class of patients, as we might naturally expect.
The likelihood of the children, in turn, inheriting any such predisposition, depends on the answer to the inquiry we first put. If the mania itself is the appearance of a family malady, then the chances are that it will pass downward with other transmissible qualities. But if the mania arise from causes which are transitory, then there is no ground for alarm.