Volume 1

A synopsis of the various kinds of difficult parturition, with practical remarks on the management of labours / By Samuel Merriman.

  • Samuel Merriman
Date:
1820
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A synopsis of the various kinds of difficult parturition, with practical remarks on the management of labours / By Samuel Merriman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    head break down every thing that opposed it; butagain the pain abates and again the head is retracted. Thus the patient must continue to suffer, till the external outlet is sufficiently dilated to allow the child’s head to pass.* During the second and third stages of labour, the pulse will have been gradually encreasing im quickness and force; the skin grows hot; the face becomes intensely red ; drops of sweat stand upon the forehead ; and a per- spiration, sometimes profuse, breaks out all over the body; frequently violent tremblings accompany the last pain, and at the moment that the head passes into the world, the extremity of suffering seems to be beyond endurance. The head of the child being born, the poor woman experiences complete relief from pain; but soon the throes return for the purpose of expelling the shoulders ; and this is eftected thus: when the head passes into the world, the chin of the foetus rests against the perineum; but while the head continues in this position, the shoul- ders are in a wrong direction for passing through the inferior bony aperture; for the long diameter of the shoulders is opposed to the short diameter of the pelvis. The first effect of the pain, then, is to turn the chin ofthe child towards the thigh of the mothert+; this alters the * The term crowning was formerly used to express that degree of advancement of the child’s head which just precedes its full expulsion : it is crowned when about half way passed into the world. t+ M. Baudelocque remarks that the chin is generally turned to the right thigh, in what he denominates the first position of the head ; and to the left, in the second position. See Appendix, No. 1.
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