"Midwife" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... France are beautiful and do not suffer from sickness. Their women do not die in childbed. This is on account of physicians and midwives who abound in knowledge. It is a Government order, Mother, that none can establish as a midwife till she has shown her ability. These people are idolators. When there is a death which is not caused by war, they instantly ascribe it to some fault in eating or drinking or the conduct of life on the part of the ...
— The Eyes of Asia • Rudyard Kipling
... of Fairefeild testifyeth vpon oath, that goodwife Whitlock, goodwife Staplyes and herselfe, were at the graue and desired to see ye markes of the witch that was hanged, they looked but found them not at first, then the midwife came & shewed them, goodwife Staplyes said she neuer saw such, and she beleeved no ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... him, when he framed his fools and jesters. They have all the true Suett stamp, a loose and shambling gait, a slippery tongue, this last the ready midwife to a without-pain-delivered jest; in words, light as air, venting truths deep as the centre; with idlest rhymes tagging conceit when busiest, singing with Lear in the tempest, or Sir Toby ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... case of Fanny; and I cheerfully submitted in every point to her judgment and her wisdom. She hired no nurse. Influenced by ideas of decorum, which certainly ought to have no place, at least in cases of danger, she determined to have a woman to attend her in the capacity of midwife. She was sensible that the proper business of a midwife, in the instance of a natural labour, is to sit by and wait for the operations of nature, which seldom, in these affairs, demand the ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... exceedingly disposed to repay any civilities they received there. Monsieur de Caraman wrote from the country to excuse his not coming to see me, as his Wife is On the point of being brought to bed, but begged I would come to them. So I would, if I was a man-midwife: but though they are easy On Such heads, I am not used to it, and cannot make a party of pleasure of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... my conscientious conviction, founded on long experience and reflection, that if there were not a single physician, surgeon, man midwife, chemist, apothecary, druggist, nor drug on the face of the earth, there would be less sickness and less mortality than now prevail." JAS. JOHNSON, M.D., F.R.S., Editor of the Medico- ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... Juan to his housekeeper, "find some one to nurse this infant; but first of all take away these rich coverings, and put on him others of the plainest kind. Having done that, you must carry the babe, without a moment's delay, to the house of a midwife, for there it is that you will be most likely to find all that is requisite in such a case. Take money to pay what may be needful, and give the child such parents as you please, for I desire to hide the truth, and not let the manner in which I became possessed of it be known." ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... were never well known, nor who was the father, for the tragical issue barred all enquiry; but it came out that poor Jeanie was left to herself, and, being instigated by the Enemy, after she had been delivered, did, while the midwife's back was turned, strangle the baby with a napkin. She was discovered in the very fact, with the bairn black in the face in the bed ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... branches filled with little, naked urchins, seemingly just ripened into life, and crying for succour: beneath, a woman holds up her apron, looking wistfully at the children, as if intreating them to jump into her lap. On inquiry, I found it to be the house of a sworn midwife, with this Dutch ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... and Delightful History of Gillian of Croydon: Containing, Her Birth and Parentage: Her first Amour, with the sudden Death of her Sweetheart: Her leaving her Father's House In Disguise, and becoming Deputy to a Country Midwife; with a very odd and humoursome Adventure before a Justice of the Peace, for screening a Child under her Hoop-petticoat: Her discovery of a Love-Intrigue between her Mistress's Daughter, and a perjur'd, false-hearted Young-man, which she relates in the tragical ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... considered doubtful, or he would not so long have postponed the step; however, finding himself still above ground in 1823, at the age of forty-three, a length of years which no doctor, astrologer, or midwife would have dared to promise him, he hoped to earn the reward of his sober life. And yet his choice showed such a lack of prudence in regard to his frail constitution, that the malicious wit of a country town could ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... A sonnet to have made?" Oh, dear me, no!—upon Miss Io (Such is the tale I heard from Clio) The midwife to have played. The boy, as if stamped out of wax, Might Zeus ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... account of himself, in contrast, was very brief. All he had to report was that his marriage had remained childless and his wife, a physician, overwhelmed with a sort of midwife practice, had to fight against the climate and was sick with longing for her father and ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... thee! Why love renounced thee ere thou saw'st the light; Nature herself start back when thou wert born, And cried,—the work's not mine. The midwife stood aghast; and when she saw Thy mountain back, and thy distorted legs, Thy face itself; Half-minted with the royal stamp of man, And half o'ercome with beast, stood doubting long, Whose right in thee were more; And ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... Note: discourse] I have explained myself when I design to treat of it in the famous subject of the Art of Printing. It hath been the labour of several years past, and if now I shall have assistance to midwife it into the world, I shall be well satisfied for the sake of the curious. For these 10 years past I have spared no cost in collecting books on this subject, and likewise drafts of the effigies of our famous printers, with other designs that will be needful on this subject. If ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... patricians' gondolas, and to let them float at random along the canals, enjoying by anticipation all the curses that gondoliers would not fail to indulge in. We would rouse up hurriedly, in the middle of the night, an honest midwife, telling her to hasten to Madame So-and-so, who, not being even pregnant, was sure to tell her she was a fool when she called at the house. We did the same with physicians, whom we often sent half dressed to some nobleman who was enjoying excellent health. The priests fared no ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... communicated to all the court, and spread throughout the empire of Persia. Upon this news the two sisters came to pay their compliments, and proffered their service to deliver her, desiring her, if not provided with a midwife, to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... XIV. Tylers.—Mary, Joseph, a midwife, the child born lying in a manger betwixt an ox and an ass, and the angel speaking to ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... snow hush, grateful that peace can be so utter. It is the silence of a broody God, and out of that frozen pause, in a house tucked up to the sills and down to the eaves, Sara Turkletaub was prematurely taken with the pangs of childbirth, and in the thin dawn, without even benefit of midwife, ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... of pregnancy, of child-birth and of nursing, perhaps, out of fear of sooner losing their charms, and then forfeiting their standing with either husband or male friends, incur such criminal acts, and, for hard cash, find ready medical and midwife support. ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... before dawn Uncle Jase Burrell and a neighbour woman, versed in the homely practises of the midwife, came to the room where Parish Thornton sat with tightly clenched hands ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... absolutely neglected by the adherents of the new dogmas. That other phase was the driving power of instinct, a power uncontrolled and unnoticed. The great fundamental instinct of sex was expressing itself in these ever-growing broods, in the prosperity of the slum midwife and her colleague the slum undertaker. In spite of all my sympathy with the dream of liberated Labor, I was driven to ask whether this urging power of sex, this deep instinct, was not at least partially responsible, ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... restrained by Misery from a wandering Life: his various returns to his Parish: his final Return—Wife of Farmer Frankford dies in Prime of Life: Affliction in Consequence of such Death: melancholy View of Her House &c. on her Family's Return from her Funeral: Address to Sorrow—Leah Cousins, a Midwife: her Character, and successful Practice: at length opposed by Dr. Glibb: Opposition in the Parish: Argument of the Doctor; of Leah: her Failure and Decease—Burial of Roger Cuff, a Sailor: his Enmity to his Family; how it originated: his Experiment and its Consequence—The Register ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... not be unfit to say something here of their births and burials, which make up so much of the pomp of too many called Christians. For births, the parents name their own children; which is usually some days after they are born, in the presence of the midwife, if she can be there, and those that were at the birth, who afterwards sign a certificate for that purpose prepared, of the birth and name of the child or children; which is recorded in a proper book, in the monthly-meeting to which ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... son, he went before the midwife to the church, presenting the child to the priest; and giving the name Samuel with a solemn interpretation of the name,[459] appointed two godfathers and two godmothers contrary to the ordinance, making his son a monster and himself ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... fall. It was the first rain for many weeks, and foreign visitors, accustomed to think of Nepenthe as a rainless land, were almost as interested in the watery shower as in that of the ashes. Mud, such mud as the oldest midwife could not remember, encumbered the roofs, the fields, the roadways. It looked as if the whole island were plastered over with a coating of liquid chocolate. Now, if the shower would ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Archimedes, and an Archimagus, and a Tycho Brahe, and a Copernicus; and thou art the darling of the Nine, and midwife to their wandering babe also! We take tea with that learned poet and critic on Tuesday night, at half-past five, in his neat library; the repast will be light and Attic, with criticism. If thou couldst contrive to wheel up thy dear carcase on the Monday, and after dining with us on tripe, calves' ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... well, I thought, for a man who had been routed out of sleep. I tried to meet his mood. "Dr. Perrin, Mrs. van Tuiver tells me that you object to amateur physicians. But perhaps you won't mind regarding me as a midwife. I have three children of my own, and I've had to help bring ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... pregnancy taboos Taboos to be observed by the husband Taboos to be observed by the wife Taboos to be observed by both husband and wife Taboos enjoined on visitors Abortion Artificial abortion Involuntary abortion The approach of parturition The midwife Prenatal magic aids Prenatal religious aids Accouchement and ensuing events Postnatal customs Taboos The birth ceremony The naming and care of the child Birth anomalies Monstrosities ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... to understand For him whom sensual rules depress; A bandbox in a midwife's hand May ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the road to retain your ground, or any part of it, against the new and abler physicians who must come with the growth of the country. You'll not be wanted by your best friends when it comes to a case of life and death. You'll become only a kind of licensed midwife rushing about from one accouchement to another, and, even for this, you must finesse and intrigue in the manner which has made the incompetents of your sex in medicine the bete ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... doubts and unsupplied omissions. PEIRESC was employed all his life on a history of Provence; but, observes Gassendi, "He could not mature the birth of his literary offspring, or lick it into any shape of elegant form; he was therefore content to take the midwife's part, by helping ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... parcelled out into estates of villages.[3] The village communities are composed of those who hold and cultivate the land, the established village servants, priest, blacksmith, carpenter, accountant, washerman, basket-maker (whose wife is ex officio the midwife of the little village community), potter, watchman, barber, shoemaker, &c., &c.[4] To these may be added the little banker, or agricultural capitalist, the shopkeeper, the brazier, the confectioner, the ironmonger, the weaver, the dyer, the astronomer or astrologer, who points out to ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... times daily throughout life. The deity selected serves the child through life as a patron saint and protector. Frequently the village barber acts in the place of a priest and puts on the sacred thread. A similar thread placed around the neck of a child, and often around its waist by the midwife immediately after birth, is intended as an amulet or charm to protect from disease and danger. It is usually a strand of silk which has been blessed by some holy man or sanctified by being placed around the neck of an idol of ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... magnate's wife. In no way and for no reason fear the hospital. It is the cleanest, safest, and by far the cheapest way. The weekly amount paid includes the board of the patient, the routine care, and all appliances and supplies of every sort that will be used. Under no circumstances should a midwife be engaged. Any reputable physician or any intellectual minister will advise that. Let your choice be either the hospital or the home; but always engage a physician, ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... taken by Eleanor Pead before being licensed by the Archbishop to be a midwife a similar clause occurs; the words, "Also, I will not use any kind of sorcery or incantations in the time of the travail of any woman." Can any of your readers inform me what charms or prayers are here referred to, and at what period midwives ceased to be licensed by the Archbishop, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... a year after the loss of my brother that I was ushered into the world, without any other assistants or spectators than my father and Dame Nature, who I believe to be a very clever midwife if not interfered with. My father, who had some faint ideas of Christianity, performed the baptismal rites by crossing me on the forehead with the end of his pipe, and calling me Jacob: as for my mother ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... The devil is the head; the synagogue of Satan is the body; the wicked spirit of iniquity is the soul. The devil made use of the church [the clergy] to midwife this monster into the world. He had plums in his dragon's mouth, and so came in by flatteries. He metamorphosed himself into a beast, a man, or woman; and the inhabitants of the world loved the woman dearly, became her sons, and took ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... John Shaxper of Rowington's will was drawn up in 1574.[254] He left his property called Madywattons, at Shrawley, to his son George, with remainder to his daughter Annis, and L20 to his son Thomas. He left legacies to his brothers Nicolas and Thomas and his Aunt Ley, the midwife. His wife's name was Eleanor. His goods were prised at L8 6s. 8d. by Thomas and William Shaxper, among others. The will of Richard Shakespere, of Rowington, November 13, 1613, which caused so much heartburning, ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... agreed in regarding water as the primal element, the original of all existences, and their theory has supporters among many primitive peoples. At the baptism festivals of their children, the ancient Mexicans recognized the goddess of the waters. At sunrise the midwife addressed the child, saying, among other things: "Be cleansed with thy mother, Chalchihuitlicue, the goddess of water." Then, placing her dripping finger upon the child's lips, she continued: "Take this, for on it thou must ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Protestant doctors within its precincts. In 1671 a decree was published commanding the arms of France to be removed from all the places of worship belonging to the pretended Reformers. In 1680 a proclamation from the king closed the profession of midwife to women of the Reformed faith. In 1681 those who renounced the Protestant religion were exempted for two years from all contributions towards the support of soldiers sent to their town, and were for the same period relieved ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wonderful for the homely truth of the delineation, but equally without the simplicity of a scriptural or the dignity of an historical scene. In an old-fashioned German chamber lies St. Anna in an old-fashioned canopied bedstead. Two women bring her a soup and something to drink, while the midwife, tired with her exertions, leans her head on the bedside and has sank to sleep. A crowd of women fill up the foreground, one of whom attends to the new-born child: others, who appear to have watched through the night, as we may suppose from the nearly extinguished ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... unexcelled sixteenth-century house. Built by the Darells it passed to the Pophams, one of whom was a leader of the Parliamentarians. A gruesome and probably true story is told of the last of the Darells—"Wild Dayrell." A midwife deposed that she had been fetched blindfold to attend a lady at dead of night. When her offices were over, a wild-looking man seized the infant and hurled it in a blazing fire. Afterwards apprehended, Darell by some trick ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... died this winter in Loddin, who used to be the midwife in the parish, and had also brought my child into the world. Of late, however, she had had but little to do, seeing that in this year I only baptized two children, namely, Jung his son in Uekeritze, and Lene Hebers her little daughter, the same whom the Imperialists afterwards speared. Item, it ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... many a family secret that comes under the jurisdiction of their peculiar vocation; and this fact enables them successfully, if they like, to dare these parties to treat them any other than respectfully. There is a skeleton in every house, a secret in every family; and too often the doctor, midwife, and accoucheur have to be treated publicly, socially, and pecuniarily in accordance with this fact. It is such men as these who, by their nefarious practices, have been enabled to accumulate a large amount of money, that are the proprietors of private hospitals or lying-in asylums, where ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... swinging up and down on her backward-tilted chair. And as Zoe had remained behind and was lounging idly against the sideboard, it came about that the company were favored with her history. She said she was the daughter of a midwife at Bercy who had failed in business. First of all she had taken service with a dentist and after that with an insurance agent, but neither place suited her, and she thereupon enumerated, not without a certain amount ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... tum maxime cum novitas excitat [53]palatum. "Many men," saith Gellius, "are very conceited in their inscriptions," "and able" (as [54]Pliny quotes out of Seneca) "to make him loiter by the way that went in haste to fetch a midwife for his daughter, now ready to lie down." For my part, I have honourable [55]precedents for this which I have done: I will cite one for all, Anthony Zara, Pap. Epis., his Anatomy of Wit, in four sections, members, subsections, &c., to ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... see disfigured! How many fine gentlemen would be forced to wear their wigs as low as their eye-brows, were this law in practice with us! I should go on to tell you many other parts of justice, but I must send for my midwife. ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... woman, for she possesses modesty and conscientiousness, self-knowledge and foresight; Aspasia is prudent, for she is silent when wise men speak. But Aspasia can also cause wise men to speak wisely by listening to them; for she helps them to produce thoughts, not like Socrates' midwife, who only brings corporeal births to pass, but ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... Not too young, however, to make her case heard—the case all living things have against the Power that creates them without so much as asking leave. The riot she made being interpreted by both father and uncle as protest against Mrs. Twiggins, a midwife who made herself disagreeable—or, strictly speaking, more disagreeable; being normally unpleasant, and apt to snap when spoke to, however civil—it was thought desirable to call in the help of her Aunt M'riar, who was living with ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... to Sterne's Yorkshire readers was of a much more elaborate kind. In the person of Dr. Slop, the grotesque man-midwife, who was to have assisted, but missed assisting, at Tristram's entry into the world, the good people of York were not slow to recognize the physical peculiarities and professional antecedents of Dr. Burton, the local accoucheur, whom Archdeacon Sterne had arrested as a Jacobite. That ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... plantation, the doctor was not nearly as popular as the "granny" or midwife, who brewed medicines for every ailment. Each plantation had its own "granny" who also served the mistress during confinement. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... eight other days for the Feast of the circumcision. So he set a supper fit for a king: the fore-leg of a sheep and the fore-leg of an ox, the egg roasted in ashes, the balls of Charoseth, the three Mitzvoth, and the wine, And by the time the supper was ready the midwife had been summoned, and it was the day of ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... heir to the crown, and consequently the resignation void, it not signifying an iota whether the child was born alive or dead: it was alive, said he, when it was conceived—here he was called to order by Dr. O'Flaharty, the queen-mother's man-midwife and member for the borough of Corbelly, who entered into a learned dissertation on embrios; but he was interrupted by the young queen's crying for her supper, the previous question for which was carried without a negative; ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... I come. 'Sbud, a man had as good be a professed midwife as a professed whoremaster, at this rate; to be knocked up and raised at all hours, and in all places. Pox on 'em, I won't come. D'ye hear, tell 'em I won't come. Let 'em snivel and cry ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... of a century, I could walk with my eyes closed straight to the flat stone where I first heard the soft chiming note of the Midwife Toad; yes, I should find it to a certainty, if time, which devastates all things, even the homes of Toads, has not moved it or ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... saw him land on the battered, black beach, for it was in the dead hour of the morning; of the three persons who are said to have met him on his way to Mary's, two were so tardy with their claims that a doubt has been cast on them. I do believe, tho, that Mother Polly Freeman, the west-end midwife, saw him and spoke with him in the light thrown from the drug-store window (where, had I only known enough to be awake, I might have looked down on them from my bed-room and got some fame of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... elegancy and beauty and brilliancy and size and symmetry, his vitals fluttered and he was seized with yearning sorrow for her fate; and he named her Al-Hayfa[FN180] for her seemlihead. Then he gifted the midwife'"—And Shahrazad was surprised by the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say. Then quoth her sister Dunyazad, "How sweet is thy story, O sister mine and how enjoyable and delectable!" Quoth she, "And where is this compared with that I would relate to you on the coming ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... saving her honor. Her mother, who was moreover apprehensive of a new embarrassment by an increase of family, came to my aid, and she at length suffered herself to be prevailed upon. We made choice of a midwife, a safe and prudent woman, Mademoiselle Gouin, who lived at the Point Saint Eustache, and when the time came, Theresa was conducted to her house by ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... metra. Metropolis cxefurbo. Mettle fervoro, kuragxo. Mew katbleki. Miasma miasmo. Mica glimo. Microbe mikrobo. Microscope mikroskopo. Midday tagmezo. Middle centro. Middle meza. Midnight noktomezo. Midsummer duonjaro, somermezo. Midwife akusxistino. Mien mieno. Might potenco. Mighty potenca. Mignonette resedo. Migrate migri. Milch laktodona. Mild dolcxa. Mildew sximo. Mildness dolcxeco. Mile mejlo. Militant milita. Military milita. Military man militisto. Militia militantaro. Milk melki. Milk lakto. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... women shut up in their back premises; whereas WE permit the foulest of profligacy to exist, and walk hand in hand with our women, and allow them to graduate as female doctors and to pull teeth, and all the rest of it. The truth is that they ought not to be allowed to advance beyond midwife, since it is woman's business either to serve as a breeding animal or opprobriously to be called neiskusobrachnaia neviesta [Maid who hast never tasted of marriage.] Yes, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... in the beef, called the mouse-piece, which given to the child, or party so affected to eat, doth certainly cure the thrush. From an experienced midwife. ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... clapped their hands, and trod on the wounded, but I got 'er goin' again. I got 'er to Poperinghe. Two soldiers died on the way, and a lunatic had fallen out somewhere, and a baby was born in the 'bus; and me with no conductor and no midwife. ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... Perez.[93] These two, Perez and Zerah. were sent out as spies by Joshua, and the line that Rahab bound in the window of her house as a token to the army of the Israelites, she received from Zerah. It was the scarlet thread that the midwife had bound upon his hand, to mark him as the child that appeared first ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... I call on, mankind maid, That at thy birth mad'st the poor smith afraid. Who with his axe thy father's midwife played. ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... of the child by the mother. We begin with the earliest days of infancy. After the first bath the new-born child was put into swaddling-clothes, a custom not permitted by the rougher habits of Sparta. On the fifth or seventh day the infant had to go through the ceremony of purification; the midwife, holding him in her arms, walked several times round the burning altar. A festive meal on this day was given to the family, the doors being decorated with an olive crown for a boy, with wool for a girl. On the tenth day after its birth, when the child was named, another feast took ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... fools, and chronicle small beer! No. Women might certainly study the art of healing, and be physicians as well as nurses. And midwifery, decency seems to allot to them, though I am afraid the word midwife, in our dictionaries, will soon give place to accoucheur, and one proof of the former delicacy of the sex be effaced from ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... Holy Ghost, by Moses, useth for the ark, is common to all kind of boats, thebah; and is the same word that Moses useth for the boat that he was exposed in, that his mother laid him in an ark of bulrushes. But we are sure that Eve had no midwife when she was delivered of Cain, therefore she might well say, Possedi virum a Domino, I have gotten a man from the Lord,[354] wholly, entirely from the Lord; it is the Lord that enabled me to conceive, the ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... than political.] With regard to their multiplication, by the way, it is related in this centenary book, among much curious information, that when another Franzfelder comes into the world it is usual to present certain largesse to the midwife, namely, one gulden (this was written in Austrian times), a loaf of bread, a little jar of lard and a few kilograms of white flour. In the old military period this personage was also, like the doctor and the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... of women (our understanding concludes) there are little dugs, and the embryos have small mouths by which they receive their nutriment. The Stoics, that by the secundines and navel they partake of aliment, and therefore the midwife instantly after their birth ties the navel, and opens the infant's mouth, that it may receive another sort of aliment. Alcmaeon, that they receive their nourishment from every part of the body; as a sponge ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Mary Bogdanovna be sent for?" said one of the maids who was present. (Mary Bogdanovna was a midwife from the neighboring town, who had been at Bald Hills for ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... and I will not be so hypocritical and base as to deny that violence must be one of our means of action. Force is the midwife of society; and never has radical change been accomplished without it. What came by the sword by the sword must be destroyed: and only through violence can violence come to an end. Nay, I will go further and confess, ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... some faint meaning make pretense, But Shadwell never deviates into sense. . . . The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull With this prophetic ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... grand constellation called Draco, or the Dragon. And the figure is sublime. It is still more sublime in the Douai translation. "His obstetric hand hath brought forth the Winding Serpent." This is certainly a grand imagination—the hand of God, like the hand of a midwife, bringing forth a constellation out of the womb of the eternal night. But in the revised version, which is exact, we have only "His hand hath pierced the Swift Serpent!" All the ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... less felicitous choice of situation. 'Roxana,' 'Singleton,' 'Moll Flanders,' 'Colonel Jack,' are all genuine offsprings of the same father. They bear the veritable impress of Defoe. Even an unpractised midwife would swear to the nose, lip, forehead, and eye of every one of them. They are, in their way, as full of incident, and some of them every bit as romantic; only they want the uninhabited island, and the charm, that has bewitched the world, of the striking solitary situation." Defoe ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... range, Black Betty, or Oyster Moll serve for a Change: As he varies his Sports his whole Life is a Feast, He thinks him that is soberest is most like a Beast: All Houses of Pleasure, breaks Windows and Doors, Kicks Bullies and Cullies, then lies with their Whores: Rare work for the Surgeon and Midwife he makes, What Life can Compare with ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... husband's mind, but when he considered that she had never left her bed for fifteen months he thought the pregnancy impossible. Still the wife insisted that she was pregnant and was confirmed in the belief by a midwife. The belly continued to increase, and about eleven months after the cessation of the menses she had the pains of labor. Three doctors and an accoucheur were present, and when they claimed that the fetal head presented the husband gave up in despair; ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... year I dare not tell) Apollo play'd the midwife's part; Into the world Corinna fell, And he ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... two fists (poings) formed on the right side, below the umbilicus. She fainted, and for six weeks suffered dull pains in the abdomen. At this time, she had true labour pains for 48 hours, and was attended by a midwife. The os uteri dilated so as to admit one finger only. The tumour disappeared during these pains. The patient recovered, with the size of ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... and the fortune-teller, The school-master, the midwife,[538] and the bawd, The conjurer, the buyer and the seller Of painting which with breathing will be thaw'd, Doth practise physic; and his credit grows, As doth the ballad-singer's auditory, Which hath ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... themselves felt through the Romanism and Lutheranism of the Renascence period. Perhaps we English shall best recognise the presence of these ideas, the working of this leaven—this docility, the necessary midwife of 'genius, who transforms the difficult tasks which the human reason sets herself into labours of love—in an Englishman; so my first example shall be taken from Erasmus' portrait of ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... rose-coloured and light-blue stuff. Baby clothes are spread out here and there. A green dress hangs on the right-hand wall. Four Sisters of Mercy are on their knees, facing the door at the back, dressed in the black and white of Augustinian nuns. The midwife, who is in black, is by the fireplace. The child's nurse wears a peasant's dress, of black and white, from Brittany. The MOTHER is standing listening by the door at the back. The STRANGER is sitting on a chair right and is trying to read a book. A hat and a brown cloak ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... older than his years. A great pity seized her for Corona, and in the rush of pity all her oddities and grown-up tricks of speech (Americanisms apart) explained themselves. She was an old father's child. Nurse Branscome was midwife enough to know what freakishness and frailty belong to children begotten by old age. Yet Corona, albeit gaunt with growing, was lithe and well-formed, and of a healthy complexion and a clear, though it inclined ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Desire, father of Jouissance, The Life of Love, the Death of dastard Fear, The kindest nurse to true perseverance, Mine heart inherited, with thy love's revere. [?] Beauty! peculiar parent of Conceit, Prosperous midwife to a travelling muse, The sweet of life, Nepenthe's eyes receipt, Thee into me distilled, O sweet, infuse! Love then (the spirit of a generous sprite, An infant ever drawing Nature's breast, The Sum of Life, that Chaos did unnight!) Dismissed mine heart from me, with ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... after having brought forth several fair children, as Riches, Arts, Learning, Trade, and many others, was at last delivered of her youngest daughter, called Faction; whom Juno, doing the office of the midwife, distorted in its birth, out of envy to the mother, from whence it derived its peevishness and sickly constitution. However, as it is often the nature of parents to grow most fond of their youngest and disagreeablest ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... she expected to be delivered, he begged her to try a change of air and remove to his house, where she would recover her health more quickly than at home. Thither she went with but a very small following, and found there a midwife who had been summoned as for her brother's wife, and who one night, without recognising her, delivered her of a fine little girl. The gentleman gave the child to a nurse, and caused it to be ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... labours seem to have been eased somewhat by the comfortable ministrations of a black and grinning muse. Midwifery, to be sure, seems an odd occupation for a lady whom one pictures rather in the role of a flapper: but a midwife was what the poet needed, and in that capacity she has served him. Apparently it is only by adopting a demurely irreverent attitude, by being primly insolent, and by playing the devil with the instrument of Shakespeare ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... most ludicrous visit this morning from the midwife of the estate—rather an important personage both to master and slave, as to her unassisted skill and science the ushering of all the young negroes into their existence of bondage is entrusted. I heard a great deal of conversation in the ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... which he had played so prominent, and spirited, and successful a part, he still deserves to be remembered with gratitude and affection by the nation, now grown big, at whose birth he so nobly played the part of midwife. James Otis was born at Great Marshes, now known as West Barnstable, February 5, 1725 (old style, February 5, 1724). His ancestor, John Otis, came from England about the year 1657, and settled in the town of Hingham. The family was from the first distinguished ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... satisfied him, so that he ordered his gentleman to dismiss the old woman the same day; and without any difficulty I sent my maid Amy to Calais, and thence to Dover, where she got an English midwife and an English nurse to come over on purpose to attend an English lady of quality, as they styled me, for ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... at length exhausted his fancy in fabricating, shaping and denying particular charges, hardly one of which ever existed, he ranges up his whole artillery of vengeance;—the battle becomes general:—And the famous Doctor Slop, the man midwife, did not pour a more copious and continued shower of curses upon Obadiah, who had tied his bag of instruments with hard knots, than is thus suddenly let fly upon the devoted head of the Editor of the Saratoga Journal. "Really" said ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... family match. Prince Francis Charles Augustus Albert Emmanuel of Saxe-Coburg—Gotha—for such was his full title—had been born just three months after his cousin Victoria, and the same midwife had assisted at the two births. The children's grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Coburg, had from the first looked forward to their marriage, as they grew up, the Duke, the Duchess of Kent, and King Leopold came equally to desire it. The Prince, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... born, I begged the midwife not to cut me open to get the baby out. The midwife told me the same place it went in the same place ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... a Hebrew midwife, 2 perceives the owls stopping in their flight, 3 the working people at their food not moving, 8 the sheep standing still, 9 the shepherd fixed and immoveable, 10 and kids with their mouths touching the ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... declare my conscientious opinion, founded on long 163:9 observation and reflection, that if there were not a single physician, surgeon, apothecary, man-midwife, chemist, druggist, or drug on the face of the earth, there would be 163:12 less sickness ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... was a midwife, and taught me the business at the same time that she taught me dancing, because she always said it was well to have two strings to your bow. Dancing, you see, is all very well, provided you are not too ambitious of appearing on first nights, but, unhappily, that ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... infants is common, both for confection of their ointment (whereto one ingredient is the fat boiled, as I have shewed before out of Paracelsus and Porta) as also out of a lust to do murder. Sprenger in Mal. Malefic. reports that a witch, a midwife in the diocese of Basil, confessed to have killed above forty infants (ever as they were new born, with pricking them in the brain with a needle) which she had offered to the devil. See the story of the three witches in Rem. Daemonola lib. cap. 3, about the end of the chapter. And M. Phillippo ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... it." The voice of Birch was like ice. He was one of those who by nature are fitted for cold and ruthless action in time of stress. Most of his money had been made across the dissecting table of enterprises, and not at their birth. He was a financial surgeon, but no midwife, and had only been magnetized into his past support by the hypnotic personality of Clark. He was grimly mindful that Marsham, after waiting for years for his opening, had got more than even. Birch's cold mind now wondered for the first time whether, after all, the cut throat ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... his Dialogues tells us, that Socrates, who was the Son of a Midwife, used to say, that as his Mother, tho she was very skilful in her Profession, could not deliver a Woman, unless she was first with Child; so neither could he himself raise Knowledge out of a Mind, where Nature had ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... throats, but slanderous ears also; not only wicked inventions, which engender and brood lies, but wicked assents, which hatch and foster them. Not only the spiteful mother that conceiveth such spurious brats, but the midwife that helpeth to bring them forth, the nurse that feedeth them, the guardian that traineth them up to maturity, and setteth them forth to live in the world; as they do really contribute to their subsistence, so deservedly they partake in the blame ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... this, that if the difficulty of curing cruelty be commensurate with the horror of its nature, then verily for the cruel must the furnace of wrath be seven times heated. Ah! for them, poor injured ones, the wrong passes away! Friendly, lovely death, the midwife of Heaven, comes to their relief, and their pain sinks in precious peace. But what is to be done for our brother's soul, bespattered with the gore of innocence? Shall the cries and moans of the torture he inflicted haunt him like an evil smell? Shall the phantoms of exquisite and sickening ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... establishments was duly heralded on their respective fronts. It was a little house, and this was the more convenient; for Mrs Gamp being, in her highest walk of art, a monthly nurse, or, as her sign-board boldly had it, 'Midwife,' and lodging in the first-floor front, was easily assailable at night by pebbles, walking-sticks, and fragments of tobacco-pipe; all much more efficacious than the street-door knocker, which was so constructed as to wake the street with ease, and even spread alarms of fire in Holborn, without ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... mistake has produced real anxiety and regret in the minds of the parents. We have seen that it was not until after baptism that the child was allowed out of the room in which it was born, except under the skilful guardianship of a relative or the midwife; but, further than this, it was not considered safe or proper to carry it into any neighbour's house until the mother took it herself, and this it was unlucky even for her to do until she had been to church. ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... removed her scruples, she called the midwife, and directed her to destroy one of the infants, and to declare that one only had been born. But she refused; and the unnatural mother was reduced to seek for a more submissive and supple agent. She ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... whom I knew personally well, was raised in the morning very early, by the outcries of his wife, to go and fetch a midwife. It was necessary, in his way, to go by a church, where there was always, on that day of the week, a morning sermon early, for the supplying the devotion of such early Christians as he; so the honest man, seeing ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... now far advanced in pregnancy to the care of his mother, who undertakes that no harm shall befall her during his absence. The queen is delivered at one birth of seven lovely children, six boys and one girl, each of whom has a silver chain around its neck.[FN426] The king's mother plots with the midwife to do away with the babes and place seven little dogs in bed beside the poor queen. She gives the children to one of her squires, charging him either to slay them or cast them into the river. But when the squire enters the forest his heart relents and laying the infants wrapped in his mantle, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... real Virginia has been chopped into short cut. But these are by far the least tormenting jokes. That good-humoured Cad, Jem Miller, finds the honorary distinction of private tutor added to his name. Dame ——s, an irreproachable spinster of forty, discovers that of Mr. Probe, man-midwife, appended to her own. Mr. Primefit, the Eton Stultz, is changed into Botch, the cobbler. Diodorus Drowsy, D.D., of Windsor, is re-christened Diggory Drenchall, common brewer; and the amiable Mrs. Margaret Sweet, the Eton pastry-cook and confectioner, finds her name united in bands of brass with ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... August, 1749, in his father's house at Frankfort on the Maine. The circumstances of his birth were thus far remarkable, that, unless Goethe's vanity deceived him, they led to a happy revolution hitherto retarded by female delicacy falsely directed. From some error of the midwife who attended his mother, the infant Goethe appeared to be still-born. Sons there were as yet none from this marriage; everybody was therefore interested in the child's life; and the panic which arose in consequence, having survived its immediate occasion, was improved into a public resolution, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... too fantastic—of words carried over a medium, an invisible wire which brought the soul of them and left the body by the way. Duff Lindsay, so eminently responsive and calculable, came running with open arms; in his rejoiceful eye-beam one saw almost a midwife to one's idea. But the comparison was subtly irritating, and after a time she turned from it. She awoke once in the night, moreover, to declare to the stars that she was less worried by the consideration of Arnold's sex than she would have thought it possible to be—one ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... set forth in condensed form the mass of knowledge of the tribes of Borneo acquired by Dr. Hose in the course of a quarter of a century's intimate study of, and sympathetic companionship with, the people of the interior. My own part in its production has been merely that of a midwife, though I may perhaps claim to have helped in the washing and dressing of the infant as well as in its delivery, and even to have offered some useful advice during the long years of pregnancy. And, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... power) extricate me from this frenzy; O you, that are neither defiled by family meanness, nor skillful to disperse the ashes of poor people, after they have been nine days interred. You have an hospitable breast, and unpolluted hands; and Pactumeius is your son, and thee the midwife has tended; and, whenever you bring forth, you spring up with ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... The office of midwife was hereditary in the family of the basket-maker. It belonged to his wife. She might not be competent, but the office was hers, anyway. Her pay was not high—25 cents for a boy, and half as much for a girl. The girl was not desired, because she would be a disastrous expense by and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... decided tone) that the money before mentioned must be paid quickly for the use of 'the prince (who lodged at the house in Market Street, now called the Palace Inn), or the house would be burnt down.' In this dilemma, the man-midwife calling first, and afterwards the physician, were both consulted by the ladies; when the former (a Tory) advised to send the money after them, whilst the latter (a Whig) thought it better to keep it till called for; consequently, never being called for in their hasty retreat, the money ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... instigating cause of the lady's journey to Garnock being the alarming intelligence which she had that day received of Mr. Craig's servant-damsel Betty having, by the style and title of Mrs. Craig, sent for Nanse Swaddle, the midwife, to come to her in her own case, which seemed to Mrs. Glibbans nothing short of a miracle, Betty having, the very Sunday before, helped the kettle when she drank tea with Mr. Craig, and sat at the room door, on a buffet-stool brought from the kitchen, while he ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... Calcutta assemble to see what progress we are making; and we produce as a sample a boy who repeats some blackguard doggerel of George Colman's, about a fat gentleman who was put to bed over an oven, and about a man-midwife who was called out of his bed by a drunken man at night. Our disciple tries to hiccup, and tumbles and staggers about in imitation of the tipsy English sailors whom he has seen at the punch houses. Really, if we can find nothing better worth reciting ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... to the Church, the midwife goeth foremost, carrying the childe, and the Godfathers and Godmothers follow into the midst of the Church, where there is a small table ready set, and on it an earthen pot ful of warme water, about the which the Godfathers and Godmothers, with ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... humbler stones, Sparkling shoots forth the price of nations. Ye safe unriddlers of the stars, pray tell, By what name shall I stamp my miracle? Thou strange inverted Aeson, that leap'st ore From thy first infancy into fourscore, That to thine own self hast the midwife play'd, And from thy brain spring'st forth the heav'nly maid! Thou staffe of him bore him, that bore our sins, Which, but set down, to bloom and bear begins! Thou rod of Aaron, with one motion hurl'd, Bud'st a perfume ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... Tough Old Stick. Excellent name! I can picture her in her cottage up on land, bringing up her long family with much shouting, much hard common sense, some swearing and a deal of useful prejudice. Now, in her second youth—not second childhood—she is mainly a lace-worker and midwife. One night, Tony and myself broke into her cottage, locked the door behind us and helped ourselves to what supper we could find—which was pickled beetroot and raw eggs. Grannie Pinn climbed in upon us through ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... starting on some shirts, she became quite pale. She was obliged to leave the work-shop, and cross the street doubled in two, holding on to the walls. One of the workwomen offered to accompany her; she declined, but begged her to go instead for the midwife, close by, in the Rue de la Charbonniere. This was only a false alarm; there was no need to make a fuss. She would be like that no doubt all through the night. It was not going to prevent her getting Coupeau's dinner ready ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... unskilfulness, or accident, the midwife, seeking with the hand to test some maiden's virginity, has sometimes destroyed it."—St. Augustine, De Civit. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... they exceeded all bounds and limits. Two years passed in extreme delight and ease. It happened that [my wife] the wazir's daughter, became pregnant; when the seventh and eighth months had passed, and she entered her full time, the pains came on; the nurse and midwife came, and a dead child was brought forth; its poison infected the mother, and she also died. I became frantic with grief, and exclaimed, what a dreadful calamity has burst upon me! I was seated at the head ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... divers persons of repute and godliness, that Mrs. Jane Preswick hath, through the blessing of God, been very successful within Dublin and parts about, through the carefull and skillfull discharge of her midwife's duty, and instrumental to helpe sundry poore women who needed her helpe, which bathe abounded to the comfourte and preservation of many English women, who (being come into a strange country) had otherwise been destitute of due helpe, and necessitated to ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... nations acknowledge the superiority of Europeans in medicine, so did the Fairies resort in perplexing cases to man for aid. There is a class of tales which has reached our days in which the Fairy lady, who is about to become a mother, obtains from amongst men a midwife, whom she rewards with rich presents for her services. Variants of this story are found in many parts of Wales, and in many continental countries. I will relate a few of ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... idea was not gained entirely from my own observation, but also from a knowledge of the high regard in which she was held by other women. Aside from her native talent and ingenuity, she was endowed with a truly wonderful memory. No other midwife in her day and tribe could compete with her in skill and judgment. Her observations in practice were all preserved in her mind for reference, as systematically as if they had been written upon the ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... absence of her husband, the mother of Malcolm. But the marquis of the time, jealous for the succession of his daughter, and fearing his brother might yet marry the mother of his child, contrived, with the assistance of the midwife, to remove the infant and persuade the mother that he was dead, and also to persuade his brother of the death of both mother and child; after which, imagining herself wilfully deserted by her husband, yet determined to endure shame rather than break the promise ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... you will see, Grand Duke of Egypt! They are ethereal demons, every one of them. They are the pick of a thousand births. Do you think that I, old midwife that I am, don't know the squall of the demon child from that of the angel child, the very moment they are delivered? Ask a musician, how he knows, even in the dark, a note struck by Thalberg from one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... what I mean mysel', an' ane that's no content wi' that, bude (behaved) ill be a howdie (midwife). I wad fain hae gotten a fancy oot o' my heid that's been there this mony a lang day; but please yersel', mem, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... here that the distinction between the Greek and the Hebrew method is most marked. Socrates, for example, called himself the midwife of men's thoughts. His maxim was, "Know thyself." His cross-examination was designed to make men see for themselves. That is, he taught by reason. But the prophet's claim was, "Thus saith the Lord!" He spoke out of his personal and passionate ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... the chest that he fell. She was turned out for her rudeness. It was useless to look for another situation, for the time of her confinement was drawing near, so she went to the house of a village midwife, who also sold wine. The confinement was easy; but the midwife, who had a case of fever in the village, infected Katusha, and her baby boy had to be sent to the foundlings' hospital, where, according to the words of the old woman who took him there, he at once died. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... the seal of virginal purity. Yet sometimes the seal is broken without loss of virginity. For Augustine says (De Civ. Dei i, 18) that "those organs may be injured through being wounded by mischance. Physicians, too, sometimes do for the sake of health that which makes one shudder to see: and a midwife has been known to destroy by touch the proof of virginity that she sought." And he adds: "Nobody, I think, would be so foolish as to deem this maiden to have forfeited even bodily sanctity, though she lost the integrity of that organ." Therefore virginity does not consist in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... and remote? The book went forward; yet, more than once recently, Carteret had questioned whether his friend would ever get himself fairly delivered of the admirable volume were not he—Carteret—permanently at hand to act midwife. An unpleasant idea pursued him that Sir Charles went, in some strange fashion, in fear of Damaris, of her criticism, her judgment. Yet fear seemed a hatefully strong and ugly word to employ as between a father and daughter so straitly, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... which is laid near Beddgelert, runs, as translated by Professor Rhys, in this way:—"Once on a time, when a midwife from Nanhwynan had newly got to the Hafodydd Brithion to pursue her calling, a gentleman came to the door on a fine grey steed and bade her come with him at once. Such was the authority with which he spoke, that the poor ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... deliver her husband's message, and then afraid to go upstairs again, she went into the drawing-room, where a fire was never lighted, now her parents were away. Soon she saw Simon run out of the house, and come back five minutes after with Widow Dentu, the village midwife. Next she heard a noise on the stairs which sounded as if they were carrying a body, then Julien came to tell her that she could go back to her room. She went upstairs and sat down again before her ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... stood at the corner of the rue de la Tixeranderie and the rue Deux-Portes. There was nothing in the exterior of it to distinguish it from any other, unless perhaps two brass plates, one of which bore the words MARIE LEROUX-CONSTANTIN, WIDOW, CERTIFIED MIDWIFE, and the other CLAUDE PERREGAUD, SURGEON. These plates were affixed to the blank wall in the rue de la Tixeranderie, the windows of the rooms on that side looking into the courtyard. The house door, which opened directly on the first steps of a ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... pagan grandmother that the new baby was a girl instead of a boy, the old woman flew into a rage and would have gone at once to get hold of the baby and put it to death. Her lameness, however, made her move slowly, and she could not find her crutch; for the midwife, who knew the bad temper of the grandmother, had purposely hid it. The old woman was angry, because she did not want any more females in the big house, where she thought there were already too many mouths to fill. Food was hard to get, and there were not enough war men to defend the tribe. She ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... perfect stillness in the church. Nothing could be heard but the metallic click of the censer and slow singing.... Near Andrey Andreyitch stood the verger Matvey, the midwife Makaryevna, and her one-armed son Mitka. There was no one else. The sacristan sang badly in an unpleasant, hollow bass, but the tune and the words were so mournful that the shopkeeper little by little lost the expression of dignity and was plunged in sadness. He thought of his Mashutka,... he remembered ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... they then put her into a swing and sing songs. While she is pregnant she is made to work in the house so as not to be inactive. After the birth of a child the mother remains impure for twelve days. A woman of the Mang or Mahar caste acts as midwife, and always breaks her bangles and puts on new ones after she has assisted at a birth. If delivery is prolonged the woman is given hot water and sugar or camphor wrapped in a betel-leaf, or they put ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... is observed. After bathing the child they place an old broom in the mother's arms instead of the child; then the mother takes the child and throws it out on the dung heap behind the house. The midwife then takes an old broom and an old winnowing fan and sweeps up a little rubbish on to the fan and takes it and throws it on the dung hill; there she sees the child and calls out. "Here is a child on ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... may be said to have a historic interest, has been popularly designated the "Midwife's Curse." It appears that Colonel Stephen Payne, who took a foremost part in striving to uphold the tottering fortunes of the Stuarts, had wooed and won a fair wife amid the battles of the Rebellion. The Duke of ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... distant provincial town, where no one could find her, and where she thought she would be far from her people. But, unfortunately, her father's brother received an appointment there, a thing she could not possibly foresee. For four months she had been living in the house of a midwife—one Maria Ivanovna; and, on learning that her uncle had come to the town, she was preparing to fly to a still ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... "Grandma was a midwife and doctored all the babies on the place. She said they had a big room where they was and a old woman kept them. They et milk for breakfast and buttermilk and clabber for supper. They always had bread. For dinner they had meat boiled and one other thing ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... Sophroniscus, a statuary, and Phaenarete, a midwife, was born B.C. 468. He lived all his life at Athens, serving indeed as a soldier at Potidaea, Amphipolis, and in the battle of Delium; but with these exceptions he never left the city; where he lived as a teacher of philosophy; not, however, founding a school or giving lectures, but frequenting ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... a voice of distress and with an involuntary wringing motion of the hands, "that for this house and those who dwell in it time is big with death, and that sharp-eyed palmer is its midwife. How strange is the destiny that wraps us all about! And now comes the sword of Saladin to shape it, and the hand of Saladin to drag me from my peaceful state to a dignity which I do not seek; and the dreams of Saladin, of whose ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... : ripari, (patch) fliki. mental : spirita, intelekta, cerba. merchant : komercisto, negocisto. mercy : kompato, indulge, korfavoreco. merry : gaja; "(to be—)" gaji. mesh : masxo, -ajxo. Messiah : Mesio. metal : metalo. method : metodo. middle : mezo. midwife : akusxistino. mignonette : resedo. migrate : migri. mild : milda, neforta, kvieta mile : mejlo. military : milita. milk : lakto, melki. mind : spirito, animo; intelekto atenti, zorgi pri, ne ofendigxi mine : mini, subfosi; ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... midwife, of whom all we will say is that she was a friend of the mother, visited Louise, who remained in bed for a few days, and then got up ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... astrologers managed subsequently to reckon very auspicious for me, may have been the causes of my preservation; for, through the unskilfulness of the midwife, I came into the world as dead; and only after various efforts was I enabled to see the light. This event, which had put our household into sore straits, turned to the advantage of my fellow-citizens, inasmuch as my grandfather, the /Schultheiss/ [Footnote: ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... meeting, yet I thank him therefor. For who is this goodly and gracious young man save the King's son of Oakenrealm, Christopher that was; and that to my certain knowledge; for he is my fosterling and my milk-child, and I took him from the hands of the midwife in the High House of Oakenham a twenty-one years ago; and they took him from Oakenham, and me with him to the house of Lord Richard the Lean, at Longholms, and there we dwelt; but in a little while they took him away from Longholms to I wot not whither, but ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... Ailill that he was "baptized in Druidic streams".[1055] In Welsh story we read that Gwri was "baptized with the baptism which was usual at that time".[1056] Similar illustrations are common at name-giving among many races,[1057] and it is probable that the custom in the Hebrides of the midwife dropping three drops of water on the child in Nomine and giving it a temporary name, is a survival of this practice. The regular baptism takes place later, but this preliminary rite keeps off fairies and ensures burial ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... wretch, hot-headed, Nor worthy to be trusted with a woman In her first labor. Well, well! she shall come. —Observe how earnest the old gossip is, (Coming forward) Because this Lesbia is her pot-companion. —Oh grant my mistress, Heav'n, a safe delivery, And let the midwife trespass any where Rather than here!—But what is it I see? Pamphilus all disorder'd: How I fear The cause! I'll wait a while, that I may know If this commotion ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... Socrates was a stonecutter and his mother a midwife, so very naturally the son had a beautiful contempt for pedigree. Socrates once said to Plato, "Anybody can trace to Codrus—by paying enough to the man who makes the family-tree." This seems to show that genealogy ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... duly heralded on their respective fronts. It was a little house, and this was the more convenient; for Mrs Gamp being, in her highest walk of art, a monthly nurse, or, as her sign-board boldly had it, 'Midwife,' and lodging in the first-floor front, was easily assailable at night by pebbles, walking-sticks, and fragments of tobacco-pipe; all much more efficacious than the street-door knocker, which was so constructed as ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... with vital and intelligent properties, working out and solving problems which have disturbed and puzzled the wisest and most astute. At such times impertinent intermeddlers abound, who claim to interpret the oracles, and who would hasten the birth of events by acting as midwife. It is impossible to dispose of or silence such people. We should be careful that we are not misled by their egregious pretensions. The fact is, the whole history of our race should teach us a lesson of profound humility. We do not accomplish half so much ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... from the purple blood of the enemy, will doubtless be very welcome to him!'—'And as to what concerns your secret mission and your discovered conspiracy,' said I to the Austrian ambassador, 'I am sorry that you cannot here give birth to the dear children of your inventive head; go with them to our midwife, Minister Golopkin, and hasten a little, for I see in your face that you are already in the pangs ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... down the steps from Leahy's terrace prudently, Frauenzimmer: and down the shelving shore flabbily, their splayed feet sinking in the silted sand. Like me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty mother. Number one swung lourdily her midwife's bag, the other's gamp poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for the day. Mrs Florence MacCabe, relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented, of Bride Street. One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the babe Was sickly; and a smile was seen to pass Across the midwife's cheek, when, holding up The feeble wretch, she to the father said, "A fine man-child!" What else could they expect? The father being, as ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... to tell how she had tried to find a midwife, and how they had demanded ten, fifteen, even twenty-five dollars, and that in cash. "And I had only a quarter," she said. "I have spent every cent of my money—all that I had in the bank; and I owe the doctor who has been coming to see me, and he has stopped ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... also more than one section. The first two volumes of the Lost Illusions narrate the early experiences of Lucien de Rubempre, a young poet of Angouleme, whose family, with some claims to gentility, has fallen into narrow circumstances, the widowed mother being obliged to earn money as a midwife, and the daughter as a laundry-woman. The latter's marriage with David Sechard, a printer, alters the situation of the family for the better; and Lucien is enabled to occupy himself in the printing-house, while pursuing his poetical efforts. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... numbered 24, and now destroyed), in the back drawing-room of the first floor, gave birth to her only child, George Gordon, afterwards sixth Lord Byron. Hanson gives the names of the nurse, Mrs. Mills, the man-midwife, Mr. Combe, the doctor, Dr. Denman, who attended Mrs. Byron at her confinement. Dallas was, therefore, mistaken in his supposition that the poet was born at Dover. The child was baptized in London on February 29, 1788, as is proved by the register ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... how this rule will work in other cases; how you can make a compromise between two opposite doctrines. The king of Egypt commanded the Hebrew nurses, 'When you do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, if it be a son ye shall kill him.' I suppose it is plain to the Judge of the Circuit Court that this kind of murder, killing the new-born infants, is against 'the will of God;' but it is a matter of record that it was according ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... come back to Mrs. Smith. She went away from the indignant adamant doctor. But she was determined not to give birth to another child. She confided her trouble to a neighbor, who sent her to a midwife. The midwife was neither very expert, nor very clean. Mrs. Smith had to go to her two or three times. After bleeding for about ten days she developed blood poisoning, from which she died a few days later, ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... dung. March 26th, my Lord sent one of his secretaries with answer to my letter, and with offer and promys of all where he can pleasure me, circa 5 post meridiem. March 29th, my Lord and Lady from Trebon toward Crumlow. The midwife's husbond's name of Newhowse is David Peregrinus, perhaps of the familie of Petrus Peregrinus, otherwise called Peter of ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... Ministers hand and the holder ups. Mr. James Vood was baptizing a man at St. Androws, and instead that he sould have baptized James, he called it John. The father, a litle bumbaized at this, after the barne is baptized and that he hes given it back to the midwife, he stands up and looks the Minister as griveously in the face and sayes, Sir, what sal I do wt 2 Johns, we have a John at home else, Sir? Whow would ye called then, Robin? quo' the Minister. James, Sir. James be ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder |
