The principles and practice of obstetric medicine and surgery : in reference to the process of parturition / by Francis H. Ramsbotham ; with notes and additions by William V. Keating.
- Francis Henry Ramsbotham
- Date:
- 1857
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The principles and practice of obstetric medicine and surgery : in reference to the process of parturition / by Francis H. Ramsbotham ; with notes and additions by William V. Keating. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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![mother, Jane Seymour; though a great person of honour (deriving her intelligence mediately from such as -were present at her labour) assured me to the contrary. He I a letter dictated by the queen to the privy council, dated October 22nd, ten days alter her delivery; and adds a certificate, signed by six physicians, dated Wednesday, [the 24th,] the day of her death, in which, although her condition is described, no mention is made, or the least hint given, of any operation having been performed on her person. (The originals are p: ■ among the Cottonian MSS., Neuo, c. 10.) The story runs, that it was supposed a natural termination of the labour could not take place; and the officiating attendant, on informing Henry of the circumstance, inquired of him whether he willed that the mother's or the child's old be saved ; to which he replied, with his accustomed coarseness and brutality, •• Save the child by all means, for I shall be able to get mothers enough.—(See Dionis, Court rations Chirurg., Demonst. 2.) Or according to others, For it is easier to get wiv.. - children. O'Meara relates that the labour of the Empress Marie Louise also was lingering, and it was feared either that the child must be sacrificed, or the Csesarean section performed ; that Dubois put the same question to Napoleon, who desired him to forget the empress's station, and to treat her as he would a shopkeeper's wife in the Rue St. Denis; but if one life must be sacri- ficed, to save the mother. (A Voice from St. Helena, 1822, vol. ii. p. 3G8.) H. Induction of premature labour.—Many historians of different ages bear ample testimony to the voluntary destruction of the offspring, as well before as after birth. The procuring abortion, indeed, was cultivated as an art by the ancients, particularly the Romans, at the period of their greatest power; and Juvenal employed his severe and chastening pen in expo- sing this, as well as the other crimes and vices of the age. The following passage will be found in the sixth Satire : contrasting the condition of the poor with that of the rich, in regard to child-bearing, he writes:— '• Jla? tamen et partus subeunt descrimen. et omnes Nutricis tolerant, fort una urgente, labores: Sed jacet aurato vix villa puerpera lecto. Tantum artes hujus. tantum niedioainina po-sunt, Qua? sterile* facit, atr/ue Komin- < nidos Caruiucit. Gaude, infelix,1 atque ipse bibendum Porri;e. quicquid erit. Nam si distendere velies, Et vexare uterum pueris salientibus. esses ^Etkiopis fortasse pater. Verse 59L Also at verse 365 of the same satire, the whole of which is levelled at the vicious practices of the Roman women, we find '•Sunt quas eunuchi imbelles. ac mollia semper Oscula delectent, et desperado barba?, Et quod abortivo wn est opus. Again, in the second Satire, verse 32, Cum tot ahortivis facundam Julia vidvam Solverd. Ovid dedicates the 13th and 14th Elegies of his second book of Amours to his mistress, who had endeavoured to make herself miscarry, and tries to dissuade her from committing such an act again. In the 14th Elegy he says : — At tenerae faciunt. sed non impune, puellae, Sa?pe, siios utero qua nccat. ipsa perit.' There can be no doubt that the preservation of personal symmetry, which, indeed. Ovid pointedly alludes to, and the trouble of a family, were the motives that induced the Roman ladies to have recourse to means for getting rid of the fruit of conception, before its life was made evident to their senses; and it was not till Christianity, by her mild and humane pre- cepts, obtained a sovereignty over the minds of this people, that the custom was abolished. Tertullian. the celebrated Christian writer of Carthage, in his Apology for Christianity, hav- ing censured his countrymen in the strongest terms for the practice of murdering their live children, says—•'But Christians are now so far from homicide, that with them it is utterly unlawful to make away with a child in the womb, when Nature is in deliberation about the man; to kill a child before it is born, is to commit murder by advance; and there is no differ- ence between destroying a child in its formation, and after it is formed and delivered : for we Christians look upon the ovum as a man in embryo; he is a being like the fruit in blossom, and in a little time would have been a perfect man, had Nature met with no disturbance (Chap, ix.) 1 He addresses Posthumus, dissuading him from marrying.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21007135_0731.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
