We feel that it is very important in connection with this new movement in obstetrics to reduce the woman's pain and suffering to the lowest possible minimum, that the trials of labor should not be overdrawn and the pangs of confinement overestimated. We must not educate the normal woman to look upon labor as a terrible ordeal—something like a major surgical operation—which, since it cannot be escaped, must be endured with the aid of a deep anesthesia.
The facts are that a very small per cent of healthy women suffer any considerable degree of severe pain—at least not after the first child. We often observe that judicious mental suggestion on the part of the physician or nurse in the form of encouraging words and supporting assurances tends to exert a marked influence in controlling nervousness and subduing the sufferings of the earlier labor pains.
We must not allow the efforts of medical science to lessen the sufferings of child-bearing, to rob womankind of their natural and commendable courage, endurance, and self-reliance.
We do not mean to perpetuate the old superstition that pain and suffering are the necessary and inevitable accompaniments of child-bearing—that the pangs of labor are a divine sentence pronounced upon womankind—and that, therefore, nothing should be done to lessen the sufferings of confinement. Severe and unnatural pain is not at all necessary to childbirth, and there exists no reason under the sun why women should suffer and endure it, any more than they should suffer the horrors of a very painful surgical operation without an anesthetic. In this connection, it should be recalled that analgesic drugs have been introduced into obstetric practice only during the last fifty years, while such methods of relieving pain have been used in general surgery for a much longer period. It is now only sixty-nine years since Simpson first employed anesthetic in obstetrics, while six years afterwards Queen Victoria gave her seal of approval to the use of chloroform in labor cases.
Thirty years ago, in speaking of the expectant mothers, Lusk warned us:
As the nervous organization loses in the power of resistance as the result of higher civilization and of artificial refinement, it becomes imperatively necessary for the physician to guard her from the dangers of excessive and too prolonged suffering.
NITROUS OXID—"LAUGHING GAS"
Nitrous oxid, or "laughing gas," was first used in labor cases in 1880 by a Russian physician. During the last twenty-five years it has been used off and on by numerous practitioners in connection with confinement, but not until the last few years has this method of relieving labor pain come into prominent notice.
While the "laughing gas" method of obstetric anesthesia did not gain notoriety and publicity from being exploited in magazines and other lay publications, it did get its initial boost in a very unique and unusual manner. A gentleman who manufactured and sold a "laughing gas" and oxygen mixing machine for the use of dentists, insisted that this method of anesthesia should be used in the case of his daughter, who was about to be confined. This patient was kept under this nitrous oxid anesthetic for six hours—came out fine—no accidents or other undesirable complications affecting either mother or child, and thus another and safe method of reducing the sufferings of childbirth has been fully demonstrated and confirmed, although it had previously been known and used in labor cases to some extent.
Starting from this particular case in 1913, many obstetricians began experimental work with "gas" in labor cases; and, at the time of this writing, it has come to occupy a permanent place in the management of labor, alongside of chloroform, ether, and "twilight sleep."