"Childbirth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Vediantae, are the mothers of Treves, of the Gallaecae, of the Vediantii; the Matres Nemetiales are guardians of groves. Besides presiding over the fields as Matres Campestrae they brought prosperity to towns and people.[141] They guarded women, especially in childbirth, as ex votos prove, and in this aspect they are akin to the Junones worshipped also in Gaul and Britain. The name thus became generic for most goddesses, but all alike were the lineal descendants ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... greatest college cannot report birth of one child to each graduate in ten years? Nothing wrong with race suicide and the incoming horde of foreigners?... Nothing wrong with you women who cannot or will not stand childbirth? Nothing wrong with most of you, when if you did have a child, you could not nurse it?... Oh, my God, there's nothing wrong with America except that she staggers under a Titanic burden that only mothers of sons can remove!... You doll women, you parasites, you toys of men, ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... another trial of the bell (for, as on the former occasion, she did not say that her co-wives had instigated her), he was greatly enraged, and told her that even should she ring when in the throes of childbirth he should not come to her, and then went away. At last the day of her confinement arrived, and when she rang the bell the King did not come.[FN435] The six jealous wives seeing this went to her and said that it was not customary for the ladies of the palace to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Rome, it is certain that the idea of chance did not enter into the concept of her until long after Servius's day. Instead the early Fortuna was a goddess of plenty and fertility, among mankind as a protectress of women and of childbirth, among the crops and the herds as a goddess of fertility and fecundity. Her full name was probably Fors Fortuna, a name which survived in two old temples across the river from Rome proper, in Trastevere, where ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... the spring to Atticus a letter from Antium, and we first hear that Tullia is dead. She had seemed to recover from childbirth; but her strength did not suffice, and she was no more.[154] A boy had been born, and was left alive. In subsequent letters we find that Cicero gives instructions concerning him, and speaks of providing for him in ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... a matter of indifference to me now. What was causing me indescribable emotion was the living proof of paternity, this little being who was my own. I felt stupefied in presence of the great mystery of childbirth. My wife was there, fainting, overcame, and the little living creature, my own flesh, my own blood, was squalling and gesticulating in the hands of Jacques. I was overwhelmed, like a workman who had unconsciously produced ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... palontologist might tell us if some such case of ischial approximation by natural mechanical causes has not caused the probable extinction of whole genera of vertebrates. "If we are to believe that for our original sin the pangs and labor of childbirth were increased, and if we also believe in the disproportionate contraction of the pelvic space being an efficient cause of the same difficulties of parturition, the logical inference is that man's original sin consisted in his getting upon ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... was defined by the Church, were obliged to swear to their belief in that dogma before they were permitted to teach even arithmetic or geometry; in England, the denunciation of inoculation against smallpox; in Scotland, the protests against using chloroform in childbirth as "vitiating the primal curse against woman"; in France, the use in clerical schools of a historical text-book from which Napoleon was left out; and, in America, the use of Catholic manuals in which the Inquisition is declared to have been a purely civil tribunal, or Protestant manuals ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... circumstances delivery became the horror they made of it, although several of the doctors told me privately not to have the slightest alarm; it was simply the method of rich selfish women to make such a bugbear of childbirth a wife might well be excused for refusing to endure it. Sifted to the bottom that was exactly what it was. I didn't know until the birth of James that they had neglected to follow the instructions of their doctors and made no preparation for nursing the child; as a result, ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... disgraceful" conditions of affairs indicated by the fact that a quarter of a million babies die every year in the United States before they are one year old, and that no less than 23,000 women die in childbirth, a large number of experts and enthusiasts have placed their ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... unnatural that Dickens stayed there for a whole book. The essential point for us here, however, is that Master Humphrey's Clock was stopped by the size and energy of the thing that had come of it. It died in childbirth. ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... prevent any movement; then, after being stripped, they were whipped. Della said that she knew of but one case of this type of punishment being administered a Ross slave. Sickness was negligible—childbirth being practically the only form of ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... compare with those of the first shogun's tomb. Back of these tombs, among the huge cedar trees that clothe the sides of the mountain, is a small red shrine where women offer little pieces of wood that they may pass safely through the dangers of childbirth. Near by is the tomb of Shodo, the saint, and three of ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... half-dozen and upward to a house. Work was the key-note of Little Poland, as it was called. While the men toiled in the sandstone quarries the women did a man's stint in the fields of the outlying farms, and bore more children. Childbirth was a mere detail in these thick-waisted women's lives; some hours, a day perhaps, and they were stooping in the fields again. And the children early put shoulder to the wheel; those too small for the fields begged food in the streets ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... had got, at the beginning of the Year, the high Maria Theresa's one Sister, Archduchess Maria Anna, to Wife; [Age then twenty-five gone: "born 14th September, 1718; married to Prince Karl 7th January, 1744; died, of childbirth, 16th December same year" (Hormayr, OEsterreichischer Plutarch, iv. erstes Baudchen, 54).] the crown of long mutual attachment; she safe now at Brussels, diligent Co-Regent, and in a promising family-way; he here walking on victorious:—need any man be happier? No ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the same feeling came over him like a flood. In the night he climbed the wall, and dug up a little girl of seven years old. He tore her in half. A few days later, he opened the grave of a woman who had died in childbirth, and had lain in the grave for thirteen days. On the 16th November, he dug up an old woman of fifty, and, ripping her to pieces, rolled among the fragments. He did the same to another corpse on the 12th December. These are only a few of the numerous cases of violation ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... obstetrics in the language. The illustrations form one of the features of the book. They are numerous and the most of them are original. In this edition the book has been thoroughly revised. More attention has been given to the diseases of the genital organs associated with or following childbirth. Many of the old illustrations have been replaced by better ones, and there have been added a number entirely new. The work treats the subject from ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... host came back to his guests, vexation showed itself in his face. Thereupon one of the intimates rose; and, looking at the entertainer, said to him, "O my lord, may be thou wilt give me leave to retire?" "And why so early retirement this day?"; asked he and the other answered him, "My wife is in childbirth and I may not be absent from her: indeed I must return and see how she does." So he gave him leave, whereupon another rose and said, "O my lord Nur al-Din, I wish now to go to my brother's for he circumciseth his son to- day."[FN26] ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... supported by the impalpable ether! It brightens about thee, and 'tis the stir of thine agitation that distributes the winds and fruitful dews. According as thou dost wax and wane the eyes of cats and spots of panthers lengthen or grow short. Wives shriek thy name in the pangs of childbirth! Thou makest the shells to swell, the wine to bubble, and the corpse to putrefy! Thou formest the pearls at the bottom ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... especially after the fourth month, avoiding farinaceous foods as much as possible, such as wheat, peas, beans, barley, and especially fine wheaten flour. These foods contain the bony constitutents, and their avoidance tends to deossify the systems of both mother and child, and make childbirth what Nature intended it to ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... that a pregnant woman must eat for two. The mothers have generally obeyed this dictum. The result is that women suffer greatly during pregnancy and at childbirth. The morning sickness, the aching back, the headache, the swollen legs and all of the discomforts and diseases from which civilized woman suffers during this period are mostly due to improper eating. Pregnancy and childbirth are physiologic ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... which in all that time simulated sleep. From the hour he first refused his craving, and went to the battle-field of bed, he had endured such agony as I believe no man but the opium-eater has ever known. I am led to believe that the records of fatal lesion, mechanical childbirth, cancerous affection, the stake itself, contain no greater torture than a confirmed opium-eater experiences in getting free. Popularly this suffering is supposed to be purely intellectual—but nothing can be wider of ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... it was attempted to deal with in this division of the book was the probability, amounting almost to a certainty, that woman's physical suffering and weakness in childbirth and certain other directions was the price which woman has been compelled to pay for the passing of the race from the quadrupedal and four-handed state to the erect; and which was essential if humanity as we know it was to exist ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... never did need drive me. No, only an immeasurable thirst for life and an insupportable curiosity. By God, I would like for a few days to become a horse, a plant, or a fish, or to be a woman and experience childbirth; I would like to live with the inner life, and to look upon the universe with the eyes of every human being I meet. And so I wander care-free over towns and hamlets, bound by nothing; know and love tens of trades and joyously float wherever it suits fate to set my sail... ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... of four hundred fourscore forty and four years begat his son Pantagruel, upon his wife named Badebec, daughter to the king of the Amaurots in Utopia, who died in childbirth; for he was so wonderfully great and lumpish that he could not possibly come forth into the light of the world without thus suffocating his mother. But that we may fully understand the cause and reason of the name of Pantagruel which at his baptism was given him, you are ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... of again; but after his supposed death, information was brought to his father that the outlaw had been married to a Danish woman, and had left a son—an orphan—for the mother died in childbirth. ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... too honourable to his interests, and too devoted to him in his interests, to bother him with hers. But, more significantly to her feelings than that, he was also too immersed to offer her, in her ordeal of childbirth, the sympathy and the anxiety that, unengrossed, he would have shown. It was there, profound and loving, beneath the surface; but his work came first. He was a man, capable of detachment, permitted by convention to practise detachment, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... so he passed away. Some persons who took refuge from external danger, under the protection of the Blessed, our fathers Ignatius and Xavier, were preserved alive. To three women Ignatius granted easy childbirth; and one Basque they relieved of toothache, when he prayed to them. Xavier came to the aid of a Spanish commander of a battalion of soldiers, who was near to death; and prolonged his life in return for two wax candles ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... high character, had been hailed with national enthusiasm, for it was known that, like Queen Victoria, she had been carefully trained and had disciplined herself, physically and morally, for the duties of a throne. It has been truly said that her death in childbirth, on November 6, was the great historical event of 1817. The prince regent, with his constitution weakened by dissipation, was not expected to survive her long, and so long as his wife lived there ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Deliberate prikonsiligxi. Deliberation prikonsiligxo. Delicacy frandajxo. Delicate delikata. Delightful rava, cxarmega. Delinquent kulpulo. Delirium deliro. Deliver (save) savi. Deliver (liberate) liberigi. Deliver (goods) liveri. Delivery (childbirth) nasko. Dell valeto. Delude trompi. Deluge superakvego. Delusion trompo. Demagogue demagogo. Demand postulo. Demean humili. Demeanour konduto. Demesne bieno—ajxo. Demise morto. Democrat demokrato. Democracy demokrataro. Demolish ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... there lived at Calb, in the Werder, an aged lady of the house of Alvensleben, who feared God, was gracious to the people, and willingly disposed to render any one a service: especially she did assist the burgesses' wives in difficult travail of childbirth, and was, in such cases, of all desired and highly esteemed. Now, therefore, there did happen in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... did not remember. Or it was possible that the gold plate she had once remembered had had some foundation in fact, that her recital of its splendors had been truth, sound and sane. It was possible that now her FORGETFULNESS of it was some form of brain trouble, a relic of the dementia of childbirth. At all events Maria did not remember; the idea of the gold plate had passed entirely out of her mind, and it was now Zerkow who labored under its hallucination. It was now Zerkow, the raker of the ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... In the matter of divorce the law of a minority of man-governed States differentiates in favour of man. It does so influenced by tradition, by what are held to be the natural equities, and by the fact that a man is required to support his wife's progeny. The law of bastardy [illegitimate childbirth] is what it is because of the dangers of blackmail. The law which fixes the age of consent discriminates against man, laying him open to a criminal charge in situations where woman—and it is not certain that she is not ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... great Spanish hero is represented as exhibiting, on many occasions, great gentleness of disposition and compassion. But while old Barbour is contented with such simple anecdotes as that of a poor laundress being suddenly taken ill with the pains of childbirth, and the king stopping the march of his army rather than leave her unprotected, the minstrels of Spain, never losing an opportunity of gratifying the superstitious propensities of their audience, are sure to let no similar incident ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... this country at least 15,000 women, it is estimated, died from conditions caused by childbirth; about 7,000 of these died from childbed fever and the remaining 8,000 from diseases now known to be to a great extent preventable or curable," says Dr. Meigs in her summary, "Physicians and statisticians agree that these figures ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... so called, undoubtedly, in thankful acknowledgment, had great power in laying the convulsions that sometimes supervened in childbirth, and added a new danger, a new fear, to the danger and the fear of that most trying moment. A motherly hand instilled the gentle poison, casting the mother herself into a sleep, and smoothing the infant's passage, after the manner of the modern ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... whole field of surgical possibilities. The Boer war and the war with Spain proved this truth in a way that could not be denied. Smallpox is almost a medical curiosity in New York City, where it once was a scourge. The mortality of childbirth has been reduced to about one-fifth of what it was by the introduction of antiseptics and anesthetics. The new methods of making and preparing drugs, the sterilization and inspection of milk, the methods devised for the care of and preparation ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... And can I think of leaving off cleaning at Easter the House of God in which I take such delight, in looking down her aisles and beholding her sanctuaries and the table of the Lord? No. And can I forsake taking part in the service of Thanksgiving of women after childbirth when mine own wife has been delivered ten times? No. And can I leave off waiting on the congregation of the Lord which you well know, Sir, is my delight? No. And can I forsake the Table of the Lord at which I have feasted I suppose some thirty ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... see the divine form as it is; on the fact that not without loss of sight, or life itself, can man look upon it. The travail of nature has been transformed into the pangs of the human mother; and the poet dwells much on the pathetic incident of death in childbirth, making [25] Dionysus, as Callimachus calls him, a seven months' child, cast out among its enemies, motherless. And as a consequence of this human interest, the legend attaches itself, as in an actual history, to definite sacred objects and places, the venerable ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... beasts, prepared a very fierce cow, provided especially for that purpose contrary to custom. And so, stripped and clothed with nets, they were led forth. The populace shuddered as they saw one young woman of delicate frame, and another with breasts still dropping from her recent childbirth. So, being recalled, they were unbound. Perpetua was first led in. She was tossed and fell on her loins; and when she saw her tunic torn from her side, she drew it over her as a veil for her thighs, mindful of her modesty ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... some little indulgence for three or four weeks previous to childbirth; they are at such times not often punished if they do not finish the task assigned them; it is, in some cases, passed over with a severe reprimand, and sometimes without any notice being taken of it. They ate generally allowed four weeks after the birth of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Jack; I can stay no longer; I am so great in childbirth with this jest. Sirrah, this predicable, this saucy groom, because, when I was in Cambridge, and lay in a trundlebed under my tutor, I was content, in discreet humility, to give him some place at the table; and because I invited the hungry slave sometimes to my chamber, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... of hill and woodland, Maid, Who to young wives in childbirth's hour Thrice call'd, vouchsafest sovereign aid, O three-form'd power! This pine that shades my cot be thine; Here will I slay, as years come round, A youngling boar, whose tusks design ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... of pain and the dangers of childbirth fill many a woman's breast with dismay. In the olden days of leeches and witchcraft, it was considered sacrilegious to lessen the pains of labor. Latterly, anaesthetics have been used at the time of parturition, and now people are beginning to find out that pain ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... that Alice had supported her strength—her courage-during the sharp pangs of childbirth; during a severe and crushing illness, which for months after her confinement had stretched her upon a peasant's bed (the object of the rude but kindly charity of an Irish shealing)—for this, day after day, she had whispered to herself, "I shall get well, and I will ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Heyerdahl, "we are an unfortunate and oppressed moiety of humanity. It is the men who make the laws, and we women have not a word to say in the matter. But can any man put himself in the position of a woman in childbirth? Has he ever felt the dread of it, ever known the terrible pangs, ever cried aloud in the ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... friend, are you experiencing the anguish and labors of childbirth? That is splendid and youthful. Those who want ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... of the prospective mother. She is always a woman of advanced age who has had abundant experience, and "has never lost a case." She is reputed to be versed in many secret medicines and devices necessary for the cure of any ailment proceeding from natural causes and connected with childbirth. I always found the midwife very reluctant to disclose the secrets ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... usuallya wedding-feast. According to the learned Nasif alYazaji the names of entertainments are as follows: Al-Jafala general invitation, opp. to Al-Nakar, especial; Khurs, a childbirth feast; 'Akikah, when the boy-babe is first shaved; A'zrcircumcision-feast; Hizk, when the boy has finished his perlection of the Koran; Milk, on occasion of marriage-offer; Wazimah, a mourning entertainment; Wakiraha "house-warming"; Naki'ah, on returning from wayfare; 'Akirah, at beginning ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... has something of the pain and peril of childbirth about it; ideas are just as mortal and just as immortal as organised ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... and crabbed man, designated so great a number of them as not worthy of having their days observed, that he was surnamed the exposer of the saints. He did not think, for instance, that if St. Margaret's prayer were applied as a poultice to a woman in travail that the pains of childbirth would be softened. ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... and is by her beloved in turn, but being betrothed to a noble lady, he yields her in marriage to his friend, on condition that once a year—on the anniversary of their meeting—she brings him a cup of water. The girl dies in childbirth, leaving a daughter who grows into her mother's perfect likeness, and comes to meet the king when he is hunting. Just, however, as he is about to take the cup from her hand, a second figure, in her exact likeness, but dressed ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... With regard to childbirth, I previously followed the advice of Dr Alice Stockholme in "Tokology," avoiding flesh meats and bone-making food and adopting a diet of fruit (chiefly lemons) and rice, brown bread and nut butter, wearing ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... existence and their worth unless they are empty husks, skeletons, and framework; even so, we alone may ask what shall come to pass, not what shall cease. Which ruins are ravings, and which are the pains of childbirth, we do not presume to decide; but you, too, who are so pained by ruins, even as we are pained by them, you, too, do not ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... heals not. There were other things Real, too. In that room at the gable a child Was born while the wind chilled a summer dawn: Never looked grey mind on a greyer one Than when the child's cry broke above the groans." "I hope they were both spared." "They were. Oh yes. But flint and clay and childbirth were too real For this cloud-castle. I had forgot the wind. Pray do not let me get on to the wind. You would not understand about the wind. It is my subject, and compared with me Those who have always lived on the ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... to be consistent with that continued elevation we are taught to expect from the strain of the foregoing. The parenthized line (by the way I abominate parentheses in this kind of poetry) at the beginning of 7th page, and indeed all that gradual description of the throes and pangs of nature in childbirth, I do not much like, and those 4 first lines,—I mean "tomb gloom anguish and languish"—rise not above mediocrity. In the Epode, your mighty genius comes again: "I marked ambition" &c. Thro' the whole Epod indeed you carry along our souls ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... the long period (nine months) elapsing between cohabitation and childbirth confused early speculation on the subject. Then clearly cohabitation was NOT always followed by childbirth. And, more important still, the number of virgins of a mature age in primitive societies was so very minute ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... against famine, disease, and death. They themselves, indeed, firmly believed that saints and angels were always at hand with temporal succors for the faithful. At their intercession, St. Joseph had interposed to procure a happy delivery to a squaw in protracted pains of childbirth; [ Brbeuf, Relation des Hurons, 1636, 89. Another woman was delivered on touching a relic of St. Ignatius. Ibid., 90. ] and they never doubted, that, in the hour of need, the celestial powers would confound the unbeliever with intervention direct and manifest. At the town of Wenrio, the people, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... their home with Mr Bronte, Mr Nicholls having pledged himself to continue in his position as curate to his father-in-law. After less than a year of married life, however, Charlotte Nicholls died of an illness incidental to childbirth, on the 31st of March 1855. She was buried in Haworth church by the side of her mother, Branwell and Emily. The father followed in 1861, and then her husband returned to Ireland, where he remained some ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... How is one to protect one's self against science? For a long while this was the capital problem. Answer: Out of paradise with man! Happiness, leisure, foster thought—and all thoughts are bad thoughts!—Man must not think.—And so the priest invents distress, death, the mortal dangers of childbirth, all sorts of misery, old age, decrepitude, above all, sickness—nothing but devices for making war on science! The troubles of man don't allow him to think.... Nevertheless—how terrible!—, the edifice of knowledge begins to tower aloft, invading ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... hymns, and in the name of Jesus Christ, and we display a spurious heart upon our breast. Our politicians, crafty pupils of the preachers and now their masters, weep and moan in the public places as if they were women in childbirth; in their souls they are lustful and cruel and greedy. They have made themselves the slaves of the wicked, and like asses their eyes are lifted no higher than the golden carrot which is their reward from the wicked. Not of one of us it can be said: "He ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... pucelage and virginity of women, which God ordained the Jews, is very fallible. Experience and history informs me that, not only many particular women, but likewise whole nations, have escaped the curse of childbirth, which God seems to pronounce upon the whole sex; yet do I believe that all this is true, which, indeed, my reason would persuade me to be false: and this, I think, is no vulgar part of faith, to believe a thing not only above, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... good book describing the female generative organs anatomically, physiologically and pathologically, treating also of childbirth, written in language easily understood by a layman. He desires to give copies to some of his young women patients. The editor regrets there is no satisfactory book on the subject although there is great need ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... thee with all love when thou art old, and pay thee back for all the benefits thou hast done unto me,' This I indeed remember, but thou forgettest; for thou art ready to slay me. Do it not, I beseech thee, by Pelops thy grandsire, and Atreus thy father, and this my mother, who travailed in childbirth of me and now travaileth again in her sorrow. And thou, O my brother, though thou art but a babe, help me. Weep with me; beseech thy father that he slay not thy sister. O my father, though he be silent, yet, ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... is Thy purpose to send me thither. And how, indeed, were it possible for me to accomplish this great matter, to bring the children of Israel up out of Egypt? How could I provide them with food and drink? Many are the women in childbirth among them, many are the pregnant women and the little children. Whence shall I procure dainties for those who have borne babes, whence sweetmeats for the pregnant, and whence tidbits for the little ones? And how may I venture to go among the Egyptian brigands and ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... aged mother—well, it shows they're excellent sons, but it's no excuse for bad work. They're only tradesmen. An artist would let his mother go to the workhouse. There's a writer I know over here who told me that his wife died in childbirth. He was in love with her and he was mad with grief, but as he sat at the bedside watching her die he found himself making mental notes of how she looked and what she said and the things he was ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... it was impossible for her to be delivered of another child. It is sufficient to add her babe was safely born, and weighed twelve pounds. The mother afterwards wrote to me, "I never before suffered so little in childbirth." ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... Paschal candles, stamped with the figure of a lamb and consecrated by the Pope. In 1471 Pope Paul II expatiated to the Church on the efficacy of this fetich in preserving men from fire, shipwreck, tempest, lightning, and hail, as well as in assisting women in childbirth; and he reserved to himself and his successors the manufacture of it. Even as late as 1517 Pope Leo X issued, for a consideration, tickets bearing a cross and the following inscription: 'This cross measured forty times makes the height of Christ ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... fate has overtaken those two sisters, the Helvidiae! Both to have given birth to daughters, and both to have died in childbirth! I am very, very sorry, yet I keep my grief within bounds. What seems to me so lamentable is that two honourable ladies should in the very spring-time of life have been carried off at the moment of becoming mothers. I am grieved for the infants who are left motherless at their birth; I am grieved ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... of childbirth and the wonder of it obsessed Kirk as time crept on. And still more was he conscious of the horrible dread that was gathering within him. Ruth's unvarying cheerfulness was to him almost uncanny. None of the doubts and fears which blackened his life appeared to touch her. Once he confided these ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... event in life. If a child, on its appearance in the world, appears to be in any way defective, its mother quietly kills it and deposits its body in the forest. If the mother dies in childbirth the child, unless someone takes pity on it and adopts it, is killed by the father, who, it may be presumed, is indisposed to take the trouble, perhaps indeed incapable of doing so, of rearing the motherless babe. That the child, in any case, immediately ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... Pare also made discoveries that need not be detailed here. Until his time it was almost universal for women to be attended in childbirth only by midwives of their own sex. Indeed, so strong was the prejudice on this point that women were known to die of abdominal tumors rather than allow male physicians to examine them. The admission of men to ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... compassionate. If that were so, then this was the ideal place to witness the infinite goodness and compassion of the Creator of all earthlings. But, the first scene to meet his gaze was that of a woman in childbirth. The torture, the excruciating pain, and the mental anguish of the human female before his eyes, defied his Martian power of expression. This process of birth, it was explained to him, was not a pathological one, nor a disease, but a ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... by the man of the sand in Count Anteoni's garden were coming true. In the church of Beni-Mora the life of Domini had begun more really than when her mother strove in the pains of childbirth and her first faint cry answered the voice of the world's light when ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... companions of the jug. When out of work, as he would often be, Then double toil for her! with peevish words From him, the sole requital of it all! Child after child she bore him; but, compelled Too quickly after childbirth to return To the old wash-tub, all her sufferings Reacted on the children, and they died, Haply in infancy the most of them,— Until but one was left,—a little boy, Puny and pale, gentle and uncomplaining, With ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... of her life the old house had spoken to her of the line of submissive wives and mothers which lay back of her, and had tamed her to a happy resignation in the common fate of women. On her mother's bed she had borne the agony of childbirth without a murmur, she whose strong young body had never known pain of any kind. She had been a joyful prisoner to her little children, she who had always roamed so foot-free in her girlhood, and with a patience inspired by the thought of her place in the pilgrimage ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... he was desirous of visiting his family, and being unwilling to leave behind his young wife, who was then not far from childbirth, he took her with him, and ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... mental processes of this excellent man. When the charges of heresy were brought against Mrs. Hutchinson, Mrs. Dyer stood by her boldly, and was threatened by the clergymen with similar proceedings. Winthrop says Mrs. Dyer was so wrought upon by the excitement that she was taken with premature childbirth. She was attended by Mrs. Hutchinson, and the child, "being not human," was despatched. This horrible story was related throughout the Colony, and both women were regarded as being in league with the devil. School-children ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... to consent to "a formal separation, to be ratified by an act of Parliament." But such an arrangement fell far short of the Prince's wishes. The Princess Charlotte, the heiress to his throne, had died in childbirth two years before, and he was anxious to be set free to marry again. The ministers were placed in a situation of painful embarrassment. There was an obvious difficulty in pointing out to one who already stood toward them in the character of their sovereign, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... The molten iron, the flaming mine, the whirling machine, the engulfing sea, and hunger always at the door take care of that. Every working man lives in perpetual danger. Compared to him, and compared to any woman in childbirth, a soldier is secure, even under fire. The daily peril, the daily toil, the fear for the daily bread harden most working men and women enough, and for that very reason we should welcome the fine suggestion of Professor William James—his last great ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... to stay in bed only two or three days after childbirth; then were forced to go into the fields to work, as if nothing ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... occurred to Father Pedro de Segura, who was one of those who had gone thither from Manila, an extraordinary incident in connection with the image of our blessed Father Ignatius. One morning, at daybreak, he was summoned in behalf of a woman who lay in a critical condition from childbirth, and wished to confess with Father Segura. While the father was dressing himself to go, he sent for an image of our father, to whom he professed great devotion—which had been increased by the outcome of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... strong than live weak. And Juba—why should she have this pride for him? For she felt pride, pangs as real as the pangs of childbirth. There are different kinds of pride, but the worst kind of pride is pride in strength, pride in power. And she knew that was what she felt. She was sinning with full knowledge and she could not ...
— Step IV • Rosel George Brown
... national representation, and which are, therefore, ignorant by what intestinal convulsions, what Brutus-like sacrifices, a little town gives birth to a deputy. Majestic but natural spectacle, which may, indeed, be compared with that of childbirth,—the same throes, the same impurities, the same lacerations, the ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... much to say of the American earth-goddesses, Toci, "our mother," and goddess of childbirth among the ancient Mexicans (509. 494); the Peruvian Pachamama, "mother-earth," the mother of men (509. 369); the "earth-mother" of the Caribs, who through earthquakes manifests her animation and cheerfulness to her children, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... threatened, and I knew not where to lay my head; when the sorrows of childbirth were overtaking me, I threw myself upon God and my just rights. But to-day, when humanity, justice, ay—reason itself, cry aloud against our acts, I confess to you that my anxiety transcends all that I have ever suffered ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... confessed, led astray by the delusions of Popery, had much commerce with the Queen's party, and had learnt from some of the garrison of Dunfermline that the child on board the lost ship was the offspring of this same Hepburn, and of one of Queen Mary's many namesake kindred, who had died in childbirth at Lochleven. And now Langston professed bitterly to regret what he had done when, in his disguise at Buxton, he had made known to some of Mary's suite that the supposed Cicely Talbot was of their country and kindred. She had been immediately ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... evidence was also of a most bewildering and diverse nature. Some of the most eminent surgeons in Liverpool were examined, and none of them agreed on the case. This fact came out that no signs of childbirth were visible as having taken place—no dead infant was discovered. The room in which Miss Burns and Mr. Angus were, was at all times accessible to the servants, and no cries of parturition were heard during the lady's illness. ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... excited by the procession of a village funeral, in which the affections of the people seemed concerned. I found on inquiry, that the corpse was the wife of the schoolmaster, who, in her prime, and in the enjoyment of general esteem, had been cut off in childbirth. The clergyman headed the procession. The coffin was borne by eight females, in white hoods and scarfs, and was followed by the unhappy husband, who conferred great effect, in the display of his grief, by carrying in his arms two young children, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... uses of hypnosis are in childbirth and for intractable pain of cancer or some other incurable diseases. Although patients usually start with hetero-hypnosis, they are put on self-hypnosis as soon as possible, and there are many cases of women waiting too long and having their babies at home painlessly through self-hypnosis. ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... Childbirth was natural and easy with them, as it generally is with all primitive peoples. An Indian woman has been known to give birth to a child, walk half a mile to a stream, step into it and wash both herself ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... daughter toddled. Between vanguard and rearguard, the rest of the party walked: Varnis, carrying her baby on her back, and Dorita, carrying a baby and leading two other children. The baby on her back had cost the life of Kyna in childbirth; one of the others had been left motherless when Eldra had been killed by the ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... "Or you might compare it to childbirth. The fact that there is pain in childbirth, or, if through modern medical science, the pain is eliminated, is beside the point. Childbirth consists of a new baby coming into the world. The mother might even die, but childbirth has taken place. She might ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... had been three days in the pains of childbirth, and had endured great torments, without being eased, either by the prayers of the Brachmans, or any natural remedies. Xavier went to visit her, accompanied by one of his interpreters; "and then it was," says he, in one of his letters, "that, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... regard to property, also in regard to children, the law is unjust to women. The mother has to undergo much in bringing a child to maturity—the agony of childbirth... the countless cares of tending and watching by night and day. The child becomes the darling of her heart, the image of her dreams, the great centre of her thoughts and hopes; and after all her toils, the law permits a husband to take the ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... die?" It was as though someone had called to her. She looked down into the black abyss from which she had willfully turned away her eyes, and saw that it was fathomless. A throe of revolt and hatred shook her. She bowed her head to her knees, racked by an anguish compared with which the torture of childbirth was nothing; and out of this deadly pain came forth, as in childbirth, something alive—a vision as swift, as passing as a glimpse into the gates of Paradise; a blinding certainty of immensity, of the hugeness of the whole of which she and Ariadne were a part; of the sacredness of life, ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... an animal about to have young, or to a woman in childbirth—which are further concessions to property and humanity. All might be done on the Sabbath, too, needful for circumcision. On the other hand, bones might not be set, nor emetics given, nor any medical or surgical operation performed. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... Couvreur—was born toward the end of the seventeenth century in the little French village of Damery, not far from Rheims, where her aunt was a laundress and her father a hatter in a small way. Of her mother, who died in childbirth, we know nothing; but her father was a man of gloomy and ungovernable temper, breaking out into violent fits of passion, in one of which, long afterward, he died, raving and yelling like ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... bat of an eye Jorde Foley explained how pure corn whiskey had cured cases of croup, saved mothers in childbirth, cured children of spasms and worms, and saved the life of many a man bitten by a copperhead or suffering from sunstroke. "Once I saw Brock Pennington stob Bill Tanner in the calf of the leg with a pitchfork. Bill he ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... Australia, the soul is described as the air or breeze which passes in and out through the nostrils and mouth; and the Greenlanders, according to Cranz, reckon two separate souls, the breath and the shadow. "Among the Seminoles of Florida, when a woman died in childbirth, the infant was held over her face to receive her parting spirit, and thus acquire strength and knowledge for its future use..... Their state of mind is kept up to this day among Tyrolese peasants, who can still fancy a good man's soul to issue from his mouth at ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... moved by it any more. The woman, who is too tender-hearted, never remembers it. Others who look on at travail have a sentimental interest, which wipes out the agony. But I who saw for the sake of seeing know, in all its horror, the agony of childbirth. I shall never forget the ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... which rode on the tail of Mr. Maxwell's horse, is supposed to be the ghost of a woman who has died in childbirth. In the form of a large bird uttering a harsh cry, it is believed to haunt forests and burial-grounds and to afflict children. The Malays have a bottle-imp, the polong, which will take no other sustenance than the blood of its owner, but it rewards him by aiding him in carrying out revengeful ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... name and dark the gifts they gave thee, child, in childbirth were, Sprung from him that rent the womb of earth, a bitter seed to bear, Born with groanings of the ground that gave him way toward ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of the above, 2, 3 and 4 were of such frequent occurrence that we did not assign them to the receipt of the bouquet. The gardener however, was convinced that it caused his wife to die in childbirth as she had never done so before. I have no explanation for the "denouement" and give the story as it happened, allowing my readers to judge for themselves whether or no any credence should be given to the fable after such ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... said Monsieur Martener. "Successful childbirth is then one of those miracles which God sometimes allows himself, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... children, three of whom, all daughters, lived to grow up. The mother died in childbirth in 1652, being then twenty-six years ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... some importance in our family at one time. You know that my mother died in childbirth, and that Henry's life as an infant was only saved by this woman's unwearied devotion. She was passionately attached to Henry, and her singular disposition and turn of mind gave her a hold upon him which he did not entirely shake off even ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... and that such and such a proportion of them is constantly hungry and in prison; that the average size of a working man's family is such, and that so great a percentage of women die from maladies incident to childbirth. Reports were read of visits to factories, shops, slums, and dockyards. Descriptions were given of the Stock Exchange, of a gigantic house of business in the City, and of a Government Office. The ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... Fig. 4 it will be seen that the cavity of the body has three openings, one on either side at the top going to the Fallopian tubes, and an opening at the bottom passing into the cavity of the neck. A constriction exists between these two cavities; but after childbirth this is largely done away with, and there is not that marked difference ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... execrable—which records a husband's sorrow on account of the death of his young wife—a princess of both the distinguished houses of Chigi and Odescalchi—who passed away at the age of twenty, in the saddest of all ways—in childbirth. It goes to one's heart to think of the desolate home and the bereaved husband left, as he says, "in solitude and grief." And though the weeper has gone with the wept, and the sore wound which death inflicted has been healed by his own hand nearly a hundred years ago, we feel a wondrous ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... bathe)—Ver. 483. It was the custom for women to bathe immediately after childbirth. See the Amphitryon of Plautus, l. 669, and the Note to the passage ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... dispositions attaches the Queen to Madame des Ursins, 169; maintains the royal authority by the spell of her gentle and steady virtues, 198; her destitution at Burgos, 199; forsaken by her Court, seeks an asylum in old Castile, 200; in childbirth, appeals touchingly to the attachment and courage of Madame des Ursins, 257; dies suddenly at the age of ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the Magi," the "Massacre of the Innocents," the "Crucifixion," and the "Last Judgment." In the "Nativity" our Lady is no longer the Roman matron of Niccola's conception, but a graceful mother, young in years, and bending with the weakness of childbirth. Her attitude, exquisite by the suggestion of tenderness and delicacy, is one that often reappears in the later work of the Pisan school—for example, in the rough abozzamento in the Campo Santo at Pisa, above the north door of the Duomo at Lucca, and at Orvieto on the facade of the cathedral; ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... conception but specialised in his function, and so later on, when certain deities have acquired definite names and become prominent above the rest, the worshipper in appealing to them will add a cult-title, to indicate the special character in which he wishes the deity to hear: the woman in childbirth will appeal to Iuno Lucina, the general praying for victory to Iuppiter Victor, the man who is taking an oath to Iuppiter as the deus Fidius. As a still later development the cult-title will, as it were, break off and set up ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... show herself before the world as her man's Queen. So long as she may but please this lord of hers, so long as she may hold him by her mind or her body, she will be Queen. She has found something softer than labor with her hands, easier than the pains of childbirth,—she has found the secret of rule,—mastery over her former master, the slave ruling the lord. Like the last wife of the barbarian king she is heaped with jewels and served with fine wines and foods and ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... after childbirth and their offspring are more or less tabooed all the world over; hence in Corea the rays of the sun are rigidly excluded from both mother and child for a period of twenty-one or a hundred days, according to their rank, after the birth has taken place.[57] Among some of the tribes ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Cotton's church was Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, who knew Cotton in England and had crossed the sea to hear his teachings. After her arrival, in June, 1636, she made herself very popular by her ministrations "in time of childbirth and other occasions of bodily infirmities." Soon she ventured to hold open meetings for women, at which the sermons of the ministers furnished the subject of comment. From a mere critic of the opinions of others Mrs. Hutchinson gradually presumed to act the part of teacher herself, ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... adoration were, in addition to whatever personal matters there might be, the recovery of a sick person, the prosperous voyage of those embarking on the sea, a good harvest in the sowed lands, a propitious result in wars, a successful delivery in childbirth, and a happy outcome in married life. If this took place among people of rank, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair |
