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Midwife   Listen
verb
Midwife  v. i.  To perform the office of midwife.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Midwife" Quotes from Famous Books



... was soon reduced to a new extremity; the pains of child-bearing came upon her, before she could make any provision for her delivery, but providence interposed on their behalf at this time also: While she travailed in the night-season, and the good man knew not where to apply for a midwife, a gentlewoman came early in the morning riding to the door, and having sent her servant back with the horse, with orders when to return. She went in, and asked the maid of the house, How her mistress was, and desired access to her, which she obtained; ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... 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 before the ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... children were allowed to a couple; on Nukufelau, only one. Any violation of this unique sumptuary law was punished by a fine.[1008] On the congested Gilbert atolls, a woman rarely had more than two children, never more than three. Abortion, produced by a regular midwife, disposed of any subsequent offspring. Affection for children was very strong here, and infanticide of the living was unknown.[1009] In Samoa, also, Turner found the practice restricted to the period before birth; but in Tahiti and elsewhere it was enforced by the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... 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 ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... do you know? Were you, perchance, the midwife of my mother, since you dare to affirm ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus

... see 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 ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... work for many centuries by the mere force of memory, the translator, together with the rest of the world, had already got over that objection in the case of the celebrated Poems of Ossian. And if he be not blinded by that partiality, which the midwife is apt to conceive for the productions, that she is the instrument of bringing into the world, the Pastoral Romance contains as much originality, as much poetical beauty, and is as happily calculated to make a deep ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... appeared in Court was the midwife who had assisted at the birth of Salome. She testified to the existence of certain peculiar marks upon the body of the child, which were found, exactly as described, by the surgeons who were appointed by the Court to make an examination for ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft

... 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 Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... now my fortune to be born of a German princess; but a man-midwife, pulling my head off in delivering my mother, put a speedy end ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding

... born, the mother was attended by the mother-in-law, and two or three matrons, besides the midwife, &c. &c. They all knew my determination about the mother nursing the child, and every attempt was apparently made to carry it into effect. At length a hint was given of some fears as to its practicability. I would not listen ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... 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 life. Creation from ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... the earth; receive it.' Then with moistened fingers she touched the breast of the child, and said, 'Behold the pure water that washes and cleanses thy heart, that removes all filthiness; receive it: may the goddess see good to purify And cleanse thine heart.' Then the midwife poured water upon the head of the child, saying, 'O my grandson—my son—take this water of the Lord of the world, which is thy life, invigorating and refreshing, washing and cleansing. I pray that this celestial water, blue and light blue, ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... kept the table in a roar of laughter, by declaring it was his opinion there was a kind of puppyism in pigs that they should wear tails—calling a great coat, a spencer folio edition with tail-pieces—Hercules, a man-midwife in a small way of business, because he had but twelve labours—assured them he had seen a woman that morning who had swallowed an almanac, which he explained by adding, that her features were so carbuncled, that the red lettered ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... 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 ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... of 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 ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... But as she was talking of 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 ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... of the midwife is carried out in the filthiest parts of the city among the lowest of the city's population, both day and night, in sun and rain ... A patient whose 'address' was registered at the Triplicane Centre was searched for by a nurse on duty in the locality of the 'address' given, and could not ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren

... the same in character, yet the details and stories themselves widely differ. But I will tell you two of the stories. A Trold lived in a barrow between two church towers, about a mile from each other. This Trold had a wife, who was of Christian folk. It was necessary to get the services of a midwife, and the Trold fetched the nearest, and gave her for her services what appeared to be two pieces of charcoal; but the Trold's wife told her to take them home, but warned her that as soon as she put one foot outside she should suddenly jump aside, as ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary

... on his affairs with profit without a wife, or a mother, or a daughter, or some such person; and mother and daughter imply matrimony. To be sure, a wife would cause some trouble, perhaps, to this young man. There might be the midwife and nurse to gallop after at midnight; there might be, and there ought to be, if called for, a little complaining of late hours; but, good God! what are these, and all the other troubles that could attend a married life; what are they, compared to the one single circumstance ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... 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, at the early age of twenty-nine, leaving a disconsolate ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... impression—was it 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 ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... them by the historical moment in which they live, and by their individual temperament. In these cases, criticism of choice merely recognizes and aids the expressions which are already being formed. It believes itself to be the mother, where, at most, it is only the midwife. ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... with violence; 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, since here if anywhere we are candid, that ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... from late toil, felt it, and raised his head in a perturbed way, as though some one had brought him news of a far-off disaster. A midwife, hurrying to a lowly birth-chamber, shivered and gathered her mantle more closely about her. She looked up at the sky, she looked out over the sea, then she bent her head and said to herself that this would not be a good night, that ill-luck was in the air. "The ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... II., was ready to be delivered of him, she commanded that all the lights should be extinguished: that if the violence of her pain should occasion her face to change colour, no one might perceive it. And when the midwife said, "Madam, cry out, that will give you ease," she answered in good Spanish, "How dare you give me such advice? I would rather ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... her the 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 the little window, and afterwards, to gain breath, she sat down ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... like Kunbis. They are bound together by a strong caste feeling, and appear to have become a regular caste. Their priests are Telugu Brahmans, and their ceremonies resemble those of Kunbis. On the third day after a child is born the midwife lifts it up for the first time, and it is given a few light blows on the back. For three days the child sucks one end of a rag the other end of which rests in a saucer of honey, and the mother is fed on rice and clarified butter. On the fourth day the mother begins ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... highland seer, whose favourable interpretation he would have secured beforehand by a bribe, but found him incorruptible. She dreamed she was delivered of a tennis-ball, which the devil (who, to her great surprise, acted the part of a midwife) struck so forcibly with a racket that it disappeared in an instant; and she was for some time inconsolable for the lost of her offspring; when, all on a sudden, she beheld it return with equal violence, and enter the earth, beneath her ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... her virtue came into her 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 ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... presented her husband with an heir on the lawn in front of their mansion, while the family were awaiting the coming of the dynamite squad to blow up their magnificent residence. An Irish woman who had been called in to play the part of midwife at a birth elsewhere on Saturday, made a pertinent comment after the wee one's eyes were opened to the walls of ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... only came incidentally. However, there was no use arguing a point like that. There was no use arguing any point. I gave in and promised to see Ascher about the matter. I prefer Ascher to Gorman if I have to persuade any one to act midwife at the birth of a cash register. Gorman would be certain to laugh. Ascher would at all events listen ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... 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 knew not, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... 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 ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... 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 childe, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt

... writing—for this I take to be the first manner of printing. In this short discouse [Transcriber's 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 this short account ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... persons, did I say, alas! I might say two only, for formerly there were but five in all, and, for many years past, the secret has been well preserved by the deaths of the principal participators in it. The late king sleeps now with his ancestors; Perronnette, the midwife, soon followed ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... "A midwife—is that what you want to be, girl?" Peer couldn't help laughing. So this was what she had been planning in these days—since he had offered to help her on ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer

... pains began, Mrs. Brangwen was put to bed, the midwife came. Night fell, the shutters were closed, Brangwen came in to tea, to the loaf and the pewter teapot, the child, silent and quivering, playing with glass beads, the house, empty, it seemed, or exposed to the winter night, as if it ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... of woman who carries around a Pomeranian dog, if she should ever have a child inadvertently, would give the midwife $500 to make away ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... University of Tuebingen, and then lived for some time as a private tutor in Bern, but he was soon attracted to Bodmer, at Zurich, who, like Gleim at a later date in North Germany, might be called the midwife of genius in South Germany. There he gave himself over entirely to the joy that arises from youth's self-creation, when talents develop under friendly guidance without being hampered by the higher requirements of criticism. Soon, however, he outgrew this stage, returned to his native town, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... 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 conviction, for which he believed he had the ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... certainty in the matter, that I could venture to foretell what women would be affected with the disease, upon hearing by what midwife they were to be delivered, or by what nurse they were to be attended, during their lying-in; and, almost in every instance, my prediction was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... see Queen Mab hath been with you! She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the fore-finger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men's ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... humour, fall into long silences, become inaccessible again 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, heretofore, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... 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

... mend : 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 ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... Manley deplored her neglected state. But such is far from being the case. Astraea and Virtue meet with a personage called Intelligence, who furnishes them with a detailed account of current scandal calculated to still further depress the dejected Virtue. The trio are soon joined by Mrs. Nightwork, a midwife, who never breaks an oath of secrecy unless it be to her interest, and the character of whose contributions to the general fund of gossip may be easily imagined. This semi-allegorical method of narration ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... 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 not ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... fortunate are they, whom, as I write, Naked and whimpering, in her arms receives The midwife! They those longed-for days may hope To see, when, after careful studies we Shall know, and every nursling shall imbibe That knowledge with the milk of the dear nurse, How many hundred-weight of salt, and ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi

... a wolf's yet unborn whelp, Till the best midwife, Nature, gave it help To issue: it could kill as soon as go. Abel, as white and mild as his sheep were, (Who, in that trade, of church and kingdoms there Was the first type,) was still infested so With this wolf, that it bred his loss and woe; And yet his bitch, his sentinel, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... 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 ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... All the people mentioned were connected with this case. Nathaniel St. Andre was the surgeon and anatomist to the King, and Cyriacus Ahlers the King's private surgeon; John Howard was the apothecary. The imposture was finally brought to light before Sir Richard Manningham (the famous man-midwife who probably influenced Sterne) and Dr. James Douglas. Among the many contemporary pamphlets on this subject is one ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous

... shall yet be set down by me concerning Geordie Lorimer before these short and simple annals shall have ended. For there is nothing so joysome to record as the brightening story of a soul coming to its real birth from the travail of its sin and struggle. For perchance time itself is God's great midwife, and man's writhing agony is to the end that he ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles



Words linked to "Midwife" :   accoucheuse, midwife toad



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