"Childbirth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Shaking sleep out of it. He must be fed up with that job, shaking that thing over all the corpses they trot up. What harm if he could see what he was shaking it over. Every mortal day a fresh batch: middleaged men, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men with beards, baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls with little sparrows' breasts. All the year round he prayed the same thing over them all and shook water on top of them: sleep. On ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... member of a man's or woman's own clan, was punishable with exile or a fine of Rs. 550/- and one pig. It is believed by the Khasis that the evils resultant from incestuous connection are very great; the following are some of them: being struck by lightning, being killed by a tiger, dying in childbirth, &c. ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... and wealth, who with her husband had clung to their adjacent home until the last shock occurred, was in the throes of childbirth. ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... differentiates in favour of man. It does so influenced by tradition, by what are held to be the natural equities, and by the fact that a man is required to support his wife's progeny. The law of bastardy [illegitimate childbirth] is what it is because of the dangers of blackmail. The law which fixes the age of consent discriminates against man, laying him open to a criminal charge in situations where woman—and it is not certain that she is not ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... Among the Amazulus convulsions are believed to be caused by ancestral spirits. With Asiatic races epileptics are regarded as possessed by demons. With the Kirghiz the involuntary muscular movements of a woman in childbirth are believed to be caused by a spirit taking possession of the body. The Samoans attribute all madness to possession. The Congo people have the same notion of epilepsy. The East Africans believe that falling sickness is due to spirits.[17] In Rajputana, says Mr. W. Crooke, disease ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... four children, three of whom, all daughters, lived to grow up. The mother died in childbirth in 1652, being then twenty-six ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... the proportionate value attached to different virtues 44 Military, civic, and intellectual virtues 44 The mediaeval type 45 Modifications introduced by Protestantism 47 Bossuet and Louis XIV. 48 Persecution.—Operations at childbirth.—Usury 50 Every great religion and philosophic system produces or favours a distinct moral type 51 Variations in moral judgments 51 Complexity of moral influences of modern times.—The industrial type 53 Qualified by other influences ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... he informed me, had died in childbirth, leaving him but one consolation—a boy, who already recalled all that was brightest and best in his lost mother. The father was naturally anxious that the son should never become acquainted with the disgrace ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... a peculiar word here in the text, which we cannot render by any other in our language than "travail." It carries the idea of pains and pangs such as a woman knows in childbirth. The mother's ardent desire is to be delivered. She longs for it with an intensity that all the wealth, honor, pleasure and power of the world could not awaken. This is precisely the meaning of the word Paul applies to creation. He declares it to be in travail, suffering ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... poisons—the Belladonna, so called, undoubtedly, in thankful acknowledgment, had great power in laying the convulsions that sometimes supervened in childbirth, and added a new danger, a new fear, to the danger and the fear of that most trying moment. A motherly hand instilled the gentle poison, casting the mother herself into a sleep, and smoothing the infant's passage, after the manner of the modern ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... her, remembered how at every crisis of her life the old house had spoken to her of the line of submissive wives and mothers which lay back of her, and had tamed her to a happy resignation in the common fate of women. On her mother's bed she had borne the agony of childbirth without a murmur, she whose strong young body had never known pain of any kind. She had been a joyful prisoner to her little children, she who had always roamed so foot-free in her girlhood, and ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... body of Christ's Church? No. And can I think of leaving off cleaning at Easter the House of God in which I take such delight, in looking down her aisles and beholding her sanctuaries and the table of the Lord? No. And can I forsake taking part in the service of Thanksgiving of women after childbirth when mine own wife has been delivered ten times? No. And can I leave off waiting on the congregation of the Lord which you well know, Sir, is my delight? No. And can I forsake the Table of the Lord at which I have feasted I suppose some thirty times? No. And, dear Sir, can I ever forsake you ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... in the Werder, an aged lady of the house of Alvensleben, who feared God, was gracious to the people, and willingly disposed to render any one a service: especially she did assist the burgesses' wives in difficult travail of childbirth, and was, in such cases, of all desired and highly esteemed. Now, therefore, there did happen ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... case, unless special pains are taken it should not so result, has nine troublesome months before her, months of discomfort if not of actual suffering; she then has an extremely trying and painful ordeal, that of childbirth, and then there is another trying period, the period of lactation or of nursing and of bringing up the baby. The penalty seems almost ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... died, the first kid did. In childbirth. It was something that happens, you know. My wife's a little woman; the baby ...
— Get Out of Our Skies! • E. K. Jarvis
... poetry in what Pierpont Morgan has done which I cannot but acknowledge with gratitude and hope. Though there be in it, as in all massive things, a brutality perhaps like that of the moving glaciers, like the making and boiling of coal in the earth, like death, like childbirth, like the impersonality of the sea, my imagination can never get past a kind of elemental, almost heathen poetry or heathen-god poetry in Pierpont Morgan's Blow or shock upon our world. There may be reason to doubt as to whether it is to be called a heaven-poetry or a hell-poetry—something ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... are called Maubunung and they heal sickness with charms and incantations. They believe in two places of abode after death: one pleasant and cheerful, for those who die a natural death; the other a real heaven, for warriors killed in battle and women who die in childbirth. They bury their dead in coffins in a sitting position, in clefts or caves, and often dry the corpse over a fire. Ancestor-worship is prevalent. They are an agricultural people, but do not breed cattle. They have worked the copper mines ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... openings, one on either side at the top going to the Fallopian tubes, and an opening at the bottom passing into the cavity of the neck. A constriction exists between these two cavities; but after childbirth this is largely done away with, and there is not that marked difference ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... a hoary belief that a pregnant woman must eat for two. The mothers have generally obeyed this dictum. The result is that women suffer greatly during pregnancy and at childbirth. The morning sickness, the aching back, the headache, the swollen legs and all of the discomforts and diseases from which civilized woman suffers during this period are mostly due to improper eating. Pregnancy and childbirth are physiologic ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... day he was born, the senate being engaged in a debate on Catiline's conspiracy, and Octavius, in consequence of his wife's being in childbirth, coming late into the house, it is a well-known fact, that Publius Nigidius, upon hearing the occasion of his coming so late, and the hour of his wife's delivery, declared that the world had got a master. Afterwards, when Octavius, upon ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... major uses of hypnosis are in childbirth and for intractable pain of cancer or some other incurable diseases. Although patients usually start with hetero-hypnosis, they are put on self-hypnosis as soon as possible, and there are many cases of women waiting too long and having their babies at home painlessly through ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... increasing contents, has also increased the generative passages in size. She has made them soft and distensible, so that an apparent physical impossibility could take place, though it is often accompanied by intense suffering. Modern medical science has made childbirth easier, but the act of childbirth is usually accompanied by more or less suffering. Excessive pain, however, is often the result of causes which proper treatment can remove before and at ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... custom among certain races of low culture in which a father before and after childbirth takes upon himself the duties and cares ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Prospect Place.' Your servant observed the address, sir. Oh, very sharp fellow! See how the old gentleman takes to his dog—fine little dog—what a stump of a tail! Deal of practice—expect two accouchements every hour. Hot weather for childbirth. So says I to Mrs. Perkins, 'If Mrs. Plummer is taken, or Mrs. Everat, or if old Mr. Grub has another fit, send off at once to No. 4. Medical men should be always in the way-that's my maxim. Now, sir, where do ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had been three days in the pains of childbirth, and had endured great torments, without being eased, either by the prayers of the Brachmans, or any natural remedies. Xavier went to visit her, accompanied by one of his interpreters; "and then it was," ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... that this pioneer wife was rich in children, for she had little else. I do not suppose she ever knew what it was to have a comfortable well-aired bedroom, even in childbirth. She was practical and a good manager, and she needed to be, for her husband was as weirdly unworldly as a farmer could be. He was indeed a sad husbandman. Only the splendid abundance of the soil and the manual skill of his sons, united to the good management of his wife, kept his ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... and sanctuaries, priest and chiefs, and generally of all persons and things pertaining to the gods and their worship, we find another kind of taboo which in the Semitic field has its parallel in rules of uncleanness. Women after childbirth, men who have touched a dead body, and so forth, are temporarily taboo and separated from human society, just as the same persons are unclean in Semitic religion. In these cases the person under taboo is not regarded as holy, for he is separated from ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... were allowed to stay in bed only two or three days after childbirth; then were forced to go into the fields to work, as if ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... unsightly, the place is the very skull of the monster himself—the fittest place of all wherein to encounter the great slug, and deal him one of those death blows which every sunrise, every repentance, every childbirth, every true love deals him. Every hour he receives the blow that kills, but he takes long to die, for every hour he is right carefully fed and cherished by a whole army of purveyors, including every trade and profession, but officered ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... safe escort through the passes in rear of the force. The General had little faith in the Sirdar, but he was fain to give his consent to an arrangement which promised alleviation to the wretchedness of the ladies, scarce any of whom had tasted a meal since leaving Cabul. Some, still weak from childbirth, were nursing infants only a few days old; other poor creatures were momentarily apprehending the pangs of motherhood. There were invalids whose only attire, as they rode in the camel panniers or shivered on the snow, was the nightdresses they wore when leaving the cantonments in their palanquins, ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... unto me,' This I indeed remember, but thou forgettest; for thou art ready to slay me. Do it not, I beseech thee, by Pelops thy grandsire, and Atreus thy father, and this my mother, who travailed in childbirth of me and now travaileth again in her sorrow. And thou, O my brother, though thou art but a babe, help me. Weep with me; beseech thy father that he slay not thy sister. O my father, though he be silent, yet, indeed, he beseecheth ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... earth and take possession of the souls of men.[158] In Borneo it is supposed that those who are killed in war become specters.[159] The belief in the Marquesas Islands is that warriors dying in battle, women dying in childbirth, and suicides go up to the sky.[160] In regard to certain modes of death opposite opinions are held in the Ladrone (Marianne) Islands and the Hervey group: in the former those who die by violence are supposed to be tortured by demons, those ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... Elisabetta Gonzaga, in 1489, on the very day upon which the latter was joined in wedlock to Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino. He had, however, been a widower since August 8, 1490, on which date his wife died in childbirth. ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... own problem and ambition, and she was too honourable to his interests, and too devoted to him in his interests, to bother him with hers. But, more significantly to her feelings than that, he was also too immersed to offer her, in her ordeal of childbirth, the sympathy and the anxiety that, unengrossed, he would have shown. It was there, profound and loving, beneath the surface; but his work came first. He was a man, capable of detachment, permitted by convention to practise detachment, by gift of, nature not inhibited from ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... confessed, led astray by the delusions of Popery, had much commerce with the Queen's party, and had learnt from some of the garrison of Dunfermline that the child on board the lost ship was the offspring of this same Hepburn, and of one of Queen Mary's many namesake kindred, who had died in childbirth at Lochleven. And now Langston professed bitterly to regret what he had done when, in his disguise at Buxton, he had made known to some of Mary's suite that the supposed Cicely Talbot was of their country and kindred. She ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... assure you that the revealed religion is the true and only one by which we can be saved. I am also suffered to inform you that you are with child, and will produce a son, who will marry my heiress; that Sir Tristram will not live long, when you will marry again, and you will die from the effects of childbirth in your forty- seventh year." I begged from him some convincing sign or proof so that when the morning came I might rely upon it, and feel satisfied that his appearance had been real, and that it was not the phantom of my imagination. He caused the hangings of the bed to be drawn in an unusual ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... correct, that her legal advisers were willing to advise her to consent to "a formal separation, to be ratified by an act of Parliament." But such an arrangement fell far short of the Prince's wishes. The Princess Charlotte, the heiress to his throne, had died in childbirth two years before, and he was anxious to be set free to marry again. The ministers were placed in a situation of painful embarrassment. There was an obvious difficulty in pointing out to one who already stood toward them in the character of their sovereign, and who must inevitably soon ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... shouting, "Vive la guerre!" And women on their knees, with outstretched arms, crying out, "War is infamous! In the name of our wombs which bore you, of our breasts which suckled you, in the name of our pain in childbirth, in the name of our anguish over your cradles, let ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... America were to organize a Childbirth Labor Union, say next Christmas—and if from next Christmas on, all the personal relations of men and women and husbands and wives—the stipulations and conditions on which women would and would not bear children were regulated ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... event in life. If a child, on its appearance in the world, appears to be in any way defective, its mother quietly kills it and deposits its body in the forest. If the mother dies in childbirth the child, unless someone takes pity on it and adopts it, is killed by the father, who, it may be presumed, is indisposed to take the trouble, perhaps indeed incapable of doing so, of rearing the motherless babe. That the child, in any case, immediately after birth, is plunged into cold ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... God, given by Moses to the Jews, to insinuate both to us and to them, that by the sin of Adam man is conceived and born in sin, and obnoxious to his wrath, ordained that a woman, after childbirth, should continue for a certain time in a state which that law calls unclean; during which she was not to appear in public, nor presume to touch any thing consecrated to God.[1] This term was of forty days upon the birth of a son, and the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... remembered had had some foundation in fact, that her recital of its splendors had been truth, sound and sane. It was possible that now her FORGETFULNESS of it was some form of brain trouble, a relic of the dementia of childbirth. At all events Maria did not remember; the idea of the gold plate had passed entirely out of her mind, and it was now Zerkow who labored under its hallucination. It was now Zerkow, the raker of the city's muck heap, the ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... common in Danish ballads, and occasional in Swedish. In the classics, Juno (Hera) on two occasions delayed childbirth and cheated Ilithyia, the sufferers being Latona and Alcmene. But the latest version of the story is said to have occurred in Arran in the nineteenth century. A young man, forsaking his sweetheart, married another maiden, who when her time came suffered exceedingly. A packman who chanced to be passing ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... I felt sure she was going away, I could not see too much of her; morning, noon, and night I had her. She brought her two children to me, and very proud she was of them. How it was I never noticed the marks of childbirth on her before I know not, but I never had. I spoke of that now. "I took good care you should not," said she smiling, and I recollected that when I had her by the side of the bed, when I looked at her on the sofa, it was nearly always with her back ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... of St. Michael" opens with a rollicking dialogue in verse between the archangel and the devil concerning a soul; it ends with a goodly list, in twenty-five verses, of the miracles performed by the angel, such as helping women in childbirth, curing the blind, and other wonders that differ nothing from those wrought by humbler earthly saints. Lastly, the "Novena in Onore di S. Michele Arcangelo," printed in 1910 (third edition) with ecclesiastical approval, has the following noteworthy ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... not because you are cursed of God, but because you violate His laws. What an incubus it would take from woman could she be educated to know that the pains of maternity are no curse upon her kind. We know that among the Indians the squaws do not suffer in childbirth. They will step aside from the ranks, even on the march, and return in a short time to them with the newborn child. What an absurdity then, to suppose that only enlightened Christian women are cursed. But one word ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... is as worthless as his word." We traffic in prayers and hymns, and in the name of Jesus Christ, and we display a spurious heart upon our breast. Our politicians, crafty pupils of the preachers and now their masters, weep and moan in the public places as if they were women in childbirth; in their souls they are lustful and cruel and greedy. They have made themselves the slaves of the wicked, and like asses their eyes are lifted no higher than the golden carrot which is their reward from the wicked. Not of one of us it can be said: "He is a great ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... dwelt at Delagoa Bay, and who was beautiful, ah! beautiful. Then he settled on the banks of the Zambesi and became a trader, building the house where he is now, or rather where its ruins are. Here his wife died in childbirth; yes, she died in my arms, and it was I who reared her daughter Juanna, tending her from the ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... had to return to take charge of the ship, and was blown off to sea. The women of the country took care of Ariadne, and comforted her in her bereavement, even bringing forged letters to her as if from Theseus, and rendering her assistance during her confinement; and when she died in childbirth, they buried her. Theseus, on his return, grieved much, and left money to the people of the country, bidding them sacrifice to Ariadne; he also set up two little statues, one of silver, and the other of brass. And at this sacrifice, which takes place on the second day of the month ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... second division, is where live the souls of those who have died a violent or sudden death, either on the battlefield, or in their own clearings by the accidental fall of a tree; and there also dwell the young mothers who have died in childbirth; they become the wives of young warriors who likewise have been cut off in the bloom of youth and are therefore proper mates for unfortunate little mothers. Such beliefs naturally tend to the taking of ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness
... after his father's death, and when his wife Katherine was expecting at any moment to be laid abed of childbirth, Jesse left his house and went for a long walk. The Bentley farm was situated in a tiny valley watered by Wine Creek, and Jesse walked along the banks of the stream to the end of his own land and on through the fields ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... the Empress died in childbirth at the early age of twenty-nine. She had come out from Austria determined to make the ways of Brazil her own. On her first arrival she was considered lovely, and there is no doubt that her fair, clear complexion, blue eyes, ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... was Josie Vesey and Henry Mays. They had ten children and five lived to be full grown. I was born in Tate County, Mississippi. Mother died in childbirth when she was twenty-eight years old. I'm the mother of twelve and got five living. I been cooking out for white people since I was nine years old. I am a good cook they all tell me and I tries to be clean ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... suffering, is not moved by it any more. The woman, who is too tender-hearted, never remembers it. Others who look on at travail have a sentimental interest, which wipes out the agony. But I who saw for the sake of seeing know, in all its horror, the agony of childbirth. I shall never forget ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... was desirous of visiting his family, and being unwilling to leave behind his young wife, who was then not far from childbirth, he took her with him, and me ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... the urn of frankincense, for it was the evening of Thursday; and as the thick smoke curled upwards towards Afiza, she trembled and gasped out: 'This is my house; and this woman hath been delivered on the spot where I died in childbirth five years ago! I will never cease troubling her, for she hath forgotten even to burn a little 'loban' (frankincense) for the repose of my spirit.' So saying my wife fell senseless on the ground and remained motionless for thirty minutes until the ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... shown some little indulgence for three or four weeks previous to childbirth; they are at such times not often punished if they do not finish the task assigned them; it is, in some cases, passed over with a severe reprimand, and sometimes without any notice being taken of it. They ate generally allowed four weeks after the birth of a child, before they are compelled to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... being married to a liar, a borrower, a mischief maker, a teaser or tormentor of children and animals, or even simply to a bore! Conceive yourself tied for life to one of the perfectly "faithful" husbands who are sentenced to a month's imprisonment occasionally for idly leaving their wives in childbirth without food, fire, or attendance! What woman would not rather marry ten Pepyses? what man a dozen Nell Gwynnes? Adultery, far from being the first and only ground for divorce, might more reasonably be made the last, or wholly excluded. The present ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... was attempted to deal with in this division of the book was the probability, amounting almost to a certainty, that woman's physical suffering and weakness in childbirth and certain other directions was the price which woman has been compelled to pay for the passing of the race from the quadrupedal and four-handed state to the erect; and which was essential if humanity as we know it was to exist (this of course was ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... combining purgatives, blisters, sudorifies, styptics, narcotics, emetics, and all that the most profound M.D. could prescribe. With this "multum in parvo" stock-in-trade the Faky receives his patients. No. 1 arrives, a barren woman who requests some medicine that will promote the blessing of childbirth. No. 2, a man who was strong in his youth, but from excessive dissipation has become useless. No. 3, a man deformed from his birth, who wishes to become straight as other men. No. 4, a blind child. No. 5, a dying old woman, carried on a litter; and ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... to read Clueuuania. All these variants point to Cluain uama (the meadow of the cave), the Irish name for Cloyne, which is undoubtedly the place referred to (see next note). The next two miracles are concerned with childbirth. The first of them may have been related to St. Bernard by Marcus, the author of Tundale's Vision (see Friedel and Meyer, La Vision de Tondale, p. iv., and above p. lxv. ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... 1778, Lessing's wife died from the effects of a difficult childbirth. The child, a boy, hardly survived its birth. The few words wrung out of Lessing by this double sorrow are to me as deeply moving as anything in tragedy. "I wished for once to be as happy (es so gut haben) as other men. But it has ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... and adoration were, in addition to whatever personal matters there might be, the recovery of a sick person, the prosperous voyage of those embarking on the sea, a good harvest in the sowed lands, a propitious result in wars, a successful delivery in childbirth, and a happy outcome in married life. If this took place among people of rank, the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... That the service be made available to all women, and that first consideration be given to expectant mothers, mothers convalescent after childbirth, and mothers who have young families, and that the service be either free or charged for according to ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... remember, I likened our present suffering to a case of appendicitis, that society suffers from the trouble set up within by an organ which has lost its function and needs to be cut out. Perhaps I might better liken society to a woman in the travail of childbirth, suffering the pangs of labor incidental to the deliverance of the new life within her womb. The trust marks the highest development of capitalist society: ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... international conventions adopted at Berne in 1906, prohibiting night work for women, and the use of white phosphorus in the manufacture of matches; and employment of women and children at night or in unhealthy work, of women before and after childbirth, including maternity benefit, and of children as regards ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... been cared for adequately in their own homes ... 24 percent of the patients secured no medical care. Many startling instances of unnecessary and indefensible suffering and misery were found.... Of the 113 women who went through childbirth in their homes, only one had the continuous care of a graduate nurse, and only 18 had any service whatever from graduate visiting nurses. 35 percent of the children born came into the world under unfit ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... oratory and chapel are richly decorated, but they do not compare with those of the first shogun's tomb. Back of these tombs, among the huge cedar trees that clothe the sides of the mountain, is a small red shrine where women offer little pieces of wood that they may pass safely through the dangers of childbirth. Near by is the tomb of Shodo, the saint, and ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... subordination gained strength with each succeeding age. I have already cited instances of ecclesiastical vehemence. As a final example I may recall that when, early in the nineteenth century, chloroform was first used to help women in childbirth, a number of Protestant divines denounced the practice as a sin against the Creator, who had expressly commanded that woman should bring forth in sorrow and tribulation. Yet times have so far changed within two decades that the ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... the chickens in the new stockade. The simple people brought their chickens to the convent, denying themselves all but the fish and rice. The mothers weaned their puny brats on rice; they stuffed them with it till their swollen paunches made a grotesque contrast with their skinny legs. Childbirth is one of the minor incidents of Filipinia. Where is the house that doesn't swarm with babies, like the celebrated residence of the old woman in the shoe? When one of these sparrows falls, the little song ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... turn about, Through hopeless desolation, Through flood and fever, fire and drought, And slavery and starvation; Through childbirth, sickness, hurt, and blight, And nervousness an' scarin', Through bein' left alone at night, I've got to be past carin'. Past botherin' or carin', Past feelin' and past carin'; Through city cheats and neighbours' spite, I've come ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... Parker and the other demi-gods of the divisional Olympus being already provided for, these were allotted to dignitaries of minor importance. It was decided that one should be given to Dr. O'Grady, who had done great service to the French population (he had assisted a Belgian refugee in childbirth and she had survived his ministrations). The second was marked down for the D.A.D.O.S., and the third for the A.D.V.S., a genial fellow who was very ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... superior to me. Mr M'Swat was upright and clean in his morals, and in his little sphere was as sensible and kind a man as one could wish for. Mrs M'Swat was faithful to him, contented and good-natured, and bore uncomplainingly, year after year, that most cruelly agonising of human duties—childbirth, and did more for her nation and her Maker than I will ever be ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... was fain to confess, that nothing but dread of her father's vengeance saved her from positive ill usage. It was altogether a wretched, unfortunate affair; and the intelligence—sad in itself—which reached me about a twelvemonth after the marriage, that the young mother had died in childbirth of her first-born, a girl, appeared to me rather a matter of rejoicing than of sorrow or regret. The shock to poor Dutton was, I understood, overwhelming for a time, and fears were entertained for his intellects. He recovered, however, and took charge of his grandchild, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... spoilt in consequence of being over the door, on which it became necessary to replace an architrave that had fallen down. There was living in Rome at this same time Francesco Tornabuoni, a rich and honoured merchant, much the friend of Domenico. This man, whose wife had died in childbirth, as is told in the Life of Andrea Verrocchio, desiring to honour her as became their noble station, had caused a tomb to be made for her in the Minerva; and he also wished Domenico to paint the whole wall against ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... with such secrecy but that they came to the knowledge of my lady, and she, not to have any fuss about it, had us married with the full sanction of the holy mother Roman Catholic Church, of which marriage a daughter was born to put an end to my good fortune, if I had any; not that I died in childbirth, for I passed through it safely and in due season, but because shortly afterwards my husband died of a certain shock he received, and had I time to tell you of it I know your worship would be surprised;" and here ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... The mystery of childbirth and the wonder of it obsessed Kirk as time crept on. And still more was he conscious of the horrible dread that was gathering within him. Ruth's unvarying cheerfulness was to him almost uncanny. None of the doubts and fears which blackened his life appeared to touch her. Once he confided these ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... sad fate has overtaken those two sisters, the Helvidiae! Both to have given birth to daughters, and both to have died in childbirth! I am very, very sorry, yet I keep my grief within bounds. What seems to me so lamentable is that two honourable ladies should in the very spring-time of life have been carried off at the moment of becoming mothers. I am grieved for the infants ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... placenta was religiously venerated, and they carefully buried it, lest it should be injured or devoured by animals. If the mother died in childbirth her offspring was buried alive with her. When a man attained puberty, he was bound to submit to certain ceremonies, some of them painful, and dictated by phallic superstitions. Funeral rites were simple: the corpse was either burnt, with howls and superstitious functions, or it was placed ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... about, would have anything to say to her; and there was no reason why he should. Osmond did, and that was better; though he had to fit on afterwards the whole rigmarole of his own wife's having died in childbirth, and of his having, in grief and horror, banished the little girl from his sight for as long as possible before taking her home from nurse. His wife had really died, you know, of quite another matter and in quite another place: in the ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... and woodland, Maid, Who to young wives in childbirth's hour Thrice call'd, vouchsafest sovereign aid, O three-form'd power! This pine that shades my cot be thine; Here will I slay, as years come round, A youngling boar, whose tusks ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... negro old enough to go into the field, and a clasp-knife to each one above the age of the third gang. From the large purchases of Scotch rugs recorded it seems probable that these were issued on other occasions than those of childbirth. As to shoes, however, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... proved a tragedy so often for the poor mother compelled by the custom to rise in her weakness and even neglect her new-born baby, in order to do double work and to tempt the appetite of her lord after his make-believe pangs of childbirth, was one sign that primitive consciousness found the new knowledge of double ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... two rooms, in one of which the whole family, however numerous, were obliged to sleep, without distinction of age, or sex, or suffering. With the water streaming down the walls, the light distinguished through the roof, with no hearth even in winter, the virtuous mother in the sacred pangs of childbirth, gives forth another victim to our thoughtless civilization; surrounded by three generations whose inevitable presence is more painful than her sufferings in that hour of travail; while the father of her coming child, in ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... except as they touch her individually, suffers a shock in connection with her intrigue with her capitalist employer and becomes straightway a radical, shortly thereafter making a pathetic and edifying end in childbirth. In these books there are hundreds of sound observations and elevated sentiments; the author's sympathies are, as a rule, remarkably right; but taken as a whole his most serious novels, however ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... cannot report birth of one child to each graduate in ten years? Nothing wrong with race suicide and the incoming horde of foreigners?... Nothing wrong with you women who cannot or will not stand childbirth? Nothing wrong with most of you, when if you did have a child, you could not nurse it?... Oh, my God, there's nothing wrong with America except that she staggers under a Titanic burden that only mothers of sons can remove!... You doll women, you parasites, you toys of men, you silken-wrapped ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... overflowed her heart. Her happiness was so great and so overpowering that it stifled at a single stroke the anguish, the fear, the inward trembling that ordinarily disturb the maternity of unmarried women and poisons their anticipations of childbirth, the divine hope that lives and moves within them. The thought of the scandal caused by the discovery of her liaison, of the outcry in the quarter, the idea of the abominable thing that had always made her think of suicide: dishonor,—even the ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... eyes aglow Smiled glad through her childbirth pain, How was the mother to know That her woe and travail were vain? A smirking servant smiled When she gave him her child to keep; Did she know he would strangle the child As it lay in ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... creates another being—not in the fleeting moment of a voluptuous contact, but by the organic and psychical sacrifices of pregnancy, childbirth and giving suck—cannot preserve for herself as much strength, physical and mental, as man whose only function in the reproduction of the species is infinitely ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... former 'flame.' But some business happened to turn up; a week passed, and then another, and when at last I went to the Hotel Demut and asked for Madame Dolsky, I learnt that four days before, she had died, almost suddenly, in childbirth. ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... childbirth, n. parturition, accouchement, childbed, lying-in, travail, labor, childbearing. Associated Words: tocology, midwife, midwifery, parturient, maieutic, layette, obstetrics, obstetrician, celation, puerperal, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... not pregnant, others that they believed she was. The medical evidence was also of a most bewildering and diverse nature. Some of the most eminent surgeons in Liverpool were examined, and none of them agreed on the case. This fact came out that no signs of childbirth were visible as having taken place—no dead infant was discovered. The room in which Miss Burns and Mr. Angus were, was at all times accessible to the servants, and no cries of parturition were heard during ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... Shelley is said to have witnessed the painful spectacle. On the previous day had passed away in childbirth the Princess Charlotte. The two circumstances formed the subject of an able pamphlet, drawing a contrast between the deaths, and furnishing a description of the scene within and without the prison at Derby. ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... Among all primitive nations, including the ancient Hebrews, we find an elaborate code of rules in regard to the conduct and treatment of women on arriving at the age of puberty, during pregnancy and the menstrual periods, and at childbirth. Among the Cherokees the presence of a woman under any of these conditions, or even the presence of any one who has come from a house where such a woman resides, is considered to neutralize all the effects of ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... They have a world of their own, and we take care of them, and of the children; and every one knows about it. I was very young, only about eighteen; and she was even younger. But I found out then what women are, and what love means to them. I saw how they could suffer. And then she died in childbirth—the child died, too." ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... Another cry, a prolonged, heartrending cry, reached his ears, his soul, his flesh. It was she who was crying like that! He darted inside, crossed the grass patch, pushed open the door, and saw her lying on the floor, her body drawn up, her face livid, her eyes haggard, in the throes of childbirth. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... to laugh when it is wiped away. After this they cut the skins of the goats into strips and run about naked, except a girdle round the middle, striking with the thongs all whom they meet. Women in the prime of life do not avoid being struck, as they believe that it assists them in childbirth and promotes fertility. It is also a peculiarity of this festival that the Luperci sacrifice a dog. One Bontes, who wrote an elegiac poem on the origin of the Roman myths, says that when Romulus and his party had killed Amulius, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... Jack; I can stay no longer; I am so great in childbirth with this jest. Sirrah, this predicable, this saucy groom, because, when I was in Cambridge, and lay in a trundlebed under my tutor, I was content, in discreet humility, to give him some place at the table; and because I invited the hungry slave sometimes to my chamber, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... one to protect one's self against science? For a long while this was the capital problem. Answer: Out of paradise with man! Happiness, leisure, foster thought—and all thoughts are bad thoughts!—Man must not think.—And so the priest invents distress, death, the mortal dangers of childbirth, all sorts of misery, old age, decrepitude, above all, sickness—nothing but devices for making war on science! The troubles of man don't allow him to think.... Nevertheless—how terrible!—, the edifice of knowledge begins to tower aloft, ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... is, mother died in childbirth. But father is still well; in fact he must have a very ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... was a smart, cute, pushing chap, this Chamberlayne; he made himself indispensable to old Vallas, and old Vallas paid him a rare good salary. He settled down in the town, and he married a town girl, one of the Corkindales, the saddlers, when he'd been here three years. Unfortunately she died in childbirth within a year of their marriage. It was very soon after that that Chamberlayne threw up his post at Vallas's, and started business as a stock-and- share broker. He'd been a saving man; he'd got a nice bit of money with his wife; he always let it be known that he had money of ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... strength of family union, Pompey, who was now nearly fifty years of age, took in marriage Caesar's daughter Julia, who was a quarter of a century his junior. But Pompey was a man who could endear himself to women, and the opinion seems to be general that had not Julia died in childbirth the friendship between the men would have been more lasting. But for Caesar's purposes the duration of this year and the next was enough. Bibulus was a laughing-stock, the mere shadow of a Consul, when opposed to such an enemy. He tried to use all ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... as an antihemorrhagic after childbirth, but its action is slow, not being felt for several hours after the administration of the drug; for this reason it cannot take the place of ergot, though it seems to be superior to the latter in passive hemorrhages. The essential oil is given ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... birth was not really dangerous and that women make too much of the pain and difficulty. That women were often forced to go through thirteen or fourteen deliveries when little thought had yet been given to creating an antiseptic environment for childbirth is apparently of little concern to S. M., who finds in the apparent willingness of the woman to have sexual intercourse one more time sufficient ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... especially a contrivance for pushing forward on the chief stage a smaller one representing the interior of a house. The Roman theatre, however, was not provided with this; and we can hardly therefore throw the blame on the poet, if everything, even childbirth, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... categories of loss of working capacity, such as illness, infirmities, old age, childbirth, ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... duke hangs right and left! The dear duke—what a model governor! How I should like to have seen him sack that street at Rennes, with all the ridiculous old men, and the women in childbirth, and the children, turned out pele-mele! And the hanging, too—why, hanging now seems to me a positively refreshing performance!" And Madame de Sevigne laughed with unstinted gayety as at ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... When the charges of heresy were brought against Mrs. Hutchinson, Mrs. Dyer stood by her boldly, and was threatened by the clergymen with similar proceedings. Winthrop says Mrs. Dyer was so wrought upon by the excitement that she was taken with premature childbirth. She was attended by Mrs. Hutchinson, and the child, "being not human," was despatched. This horrible story was related throughout the Colony, and both women were regarded as being in league with the devil. School-children used ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... independent of compulsory; and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose. The huge fundamental function upon which all anthropology turns, that of sex and childbirth, has never been inside the political state, but always outside of it. The state concerned itself with the trivial question of killing people, but wisely left alone the whole business of getting them born. A Eugenist might indeed plausibly ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... there occurred to Father Pedro de Segura, who was one of those who had gone thither from Manila, an extraordinary incident in connection with the image of our blessed Father Ignatius. One morning, at daybreak, he was summoned in behalf of a woman who lay in a critical condition from childbirth, and wished to confess with Father Segura. While the father was dressing himself to go, he sent for an image of our father, to whom he professed great devotion—which had been increased by the outcome ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... into a single wagon, drawn by two yoke of oxen, the combined wealth of himself and Dennis Hanks, and started for the new State. His daughter Sarah or Nancy, for she was called by both names, who married Aaron Grigsby a few years before, had died in childbirth. The emigrating family consisted of the Lincolns, John Johnston, Mrs. Lincoln's son, and her daughters, Mrs. Hall and Mrs. ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... Iberians of the North of Spain, the women, after the birth of a child, tend their husbands, putting them to bed instead of going themselves. The same custom existed among the Basques only a few years ago. "In Biscay," says M. F. Michel, "the women rise immediately after childbirth and attend to the duties of the household, while the husband goes to bed, taking the baby with him, and thus receives the neighbors' compliments." The same custom was found in France, and is said to exist to this day in some cantons of Bearn. Diodorus Siculus tells us ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... state to the parish church to hear the Mass for recovery from childbirth, as is the custom in the old families of Provence. I was supported on either side by the two grandfathers—Louis' father and my own. Never had I knelt before God with such a flood of gratitude in my heart. I have so much to tell you ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... the language. The illustrations form one of the features of the book. They are numerous and the most of them are original. In this edition the book has been thoroughly revised. More attention has been given to the diseases of the genital organs associated with or following childbirth. Many of the old illustrations have been replaced by better ones, and there have been added a number entirely new. The work treats the subject from ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... did as she was told, and she became renowned for her medical skill, especially in childbirth, for her salve eased the pains, and her waters brought milk. By-and-by, she got known all over the island, and rich people came to her from afar, and she always made the rich pay, and the ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... foundation in her temperament. There were moments when he fell back on his old superstition (exploded by the doctor) and told himself that Violet was one of those who suffer profoundly from the shock of childbirth. And in that case she would get ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair |
