Joel Shew

“ Physicians are in the habit of thinking that they must order something from the apothecary’s, even if it is nothing more than bread pills, colored a little, to make them look like medicine. They think they must do something, or else it would not be fair to charge for their visit. Medical men, you know, must live by their profession; and people have not been in the habit of thinking they must pay, unless the doctor does something. For my part, I think that physician deserves the most pay who does the least; that is, who will teach people to cure themselves, and to keep well without medicine. ”

“ If I could write as impressively as I feel earnestly on this subject, how would I warn you, my friends, against the evils of too tight and illy-adapted clothing in pregnancy. How often have I pitied the newly-married woman, who seems really to be under an unavoidable necessity of conforming to fashion—so much are we all of us under the world’s influence—that her health and bodily comfort have been deteriorated and greatly interfered with. ”

“ I have known a woman commit imprudences, such as doing a great deal of work at one time, when she was generally indolent in her habits; and thus, by the indolence 109and overworking alternately, abortion, hemorrhage, attended with fainting—and which has brought her to the very verge of death—has been caused. I have known, too, imprudent women, who, dissatisfied with themselves and their condition, have taken powerful medicines, with the idea of removing their unwelcome obstructions, and thus to bring upon themselves a train of evils and sufferings which have ended only in the sleep of death. ”

“ I have not, I trust, heretofore, in my medical lifetime, been wholly unmindful of my duty as a physician, in endeavoring to instruct and to encourage your sex in these matters. But I have never wished to conceal my conviction that I regard pregnancy and childbirth as things of very serious moment in a woman’s life; and he who can trifle with them is almost worse than a very fiend. ”

“ I do not, however, wish to conceal the fact, that I do not believe woman will ever, as a general thing, in any well-regulated society, practice the healing art. I give her all credit for her purer and more devoted sympathy with the sick, for her kindness and benevolence, as well as for her capability of acquiring science. But I do not believe that it is her mission to pursue that toilsome and life-wearing calling, which requires, oftentimes, the exercise of all the sterner faculties and powers, mental and physical, of the stronger sex. ”

“ But see the beautiful, and at the same time wonderful operation of nature in the mechanism of parturition. At first, some days before labor is to come on, the abdomen begins to subside, showing that the uterus, with its contents, is gradually sinking downward in preparation for the greater struggle that is to take place at the birth. Probably, too, the womb at the same time begins to contract itself more firmly upon the child, and, as it were, begins to gather strength for the contest which it is about to engage in, namely, that of forcing the child into the world. ”

“ Nature, however, is not so closely bound down to arbitrary rules as we might at first conclude. Indeed, we could not reasonably suppose that the Creator would form woman’s system in such a way that she could not safely bear children, even if the child-bearing function were not brought into action until some years after puberty. I knew a lady whose marriage took place quite late in life, and whose first child was born when she was forty-two; and although her labor was a severe one, lasting seventy-two hours and upward, yet she recovered remarkably well, as much so as almost any one I ever knew. ”

“ It is maintained, viitoo, that say what we may, childbirth is, and must necessarily be, in all civilized societies, a serious thing to enter upon. What woman who has ever passed through this ordeal does not regard it so? and what physician, no matter how old, or experienced, or skillful he may be, does not, every time he enters the lying-in chamber, feel this responsibility to be a great and trying one? Admitting all that can be done by the water-treatment in matters of midwifery, and much, very much, certainly may be—childbirth is yet an agony, and must ever continue so to be. ”

“ It is naturally a breathing organ.
If you keep the air from the skin, your system feels smothered. Does not every one know how refreshing it is, on a hot, sultry day, to allow the atmosphere to circulate freely about the surface?
Every lady, however genteel, however pinched up in her fashionableness she may choose to be when she goes out before the world, takes off her clothing from instinct as soon as she is alone by herself again. ”

“ A woman who laces herself tightly about the waist cannot be supposed to breathe hardly more than one half the amount of air she should do. How, then, in the name of common sense, can she expect to enjoy health? Every organ of the human system must be allowed its free exercise, or a deterioration of the general health must be the inevitable result. We might as well expect to have good health with only half the amount of food we should have, as with half the amount of the air we should breathe. ”

“ In conclusion, I remark, that if any one of you who is about arriving at the turn of life, feels that you are growing old, that you will be less attractive to those about you, and that you will enjoy less of the social pleasures of life after this change has taken place, there is yet a comfort for you, even in this world. You will now no longer be subject to those monthly troubles which, for these thirty years, have been your lot. All the annoyance, the irregularity, the tardiness, the suppression, and the pain—these all are now gone from you, no more to return. ”

“ Thus, you perceive, if any unnatural pressure is made upon a part of the system, motion is impeded, and without free motion, health cannot exist; that with such pressure, parts upon which it is made are impoverished; that if clothing is worn too tightly about the body, the breathing function of the skin is hindered, and that debility is the result; that in particular, if the chest is compressed, as is often done by the use of stays and corsets, tight dresses, and the like, that important function of respiration is impeded, and that thus the health must inevitably sink. ”

“ But all of these hypotheses are proved fallacious by the facts, that a large or small child is born at the same period even with the same woman, and that a dead child, unless the death took place at a very early part of the pregnancy, is born in the same manner, and with the same punctuality as to period, as a live one. “No fact,” says Dr. Denman, “is more incontestibly proved, than that a dead child, even though it may have become putrid, is commonly born after a labor as regular and natural in every part of the process, as a living one.” ”

“ I have many a time pitied the condition of women whom I have attended, who had but one room to live in, cook, wash, iron, and at last to be confined in; and yet those women have in general got along better than such as live in a more sumptuous way. Such women are, in fact, workers, and employment, as I have before remarked, is a most blessed thing in regard to preparing the system for the important function of labor. ”

“ There is, perhaps, no period of life in which the management of the health becomes a matter of more importance than in pregnancy. A little mismanagement here is not unfrequently sufficient to cause the individual life-long suffering and disease. I have known a woman, in the fifth or sixth month of pregnancy, to go to an evening party, become excited and mirthful, remain late at night, eating and drinking, as is customary on such occasions, and perhaps, worst of all for a person in such a condition, engage freely in the dance. ”

“ It is the opinion of some able writers on medicine, “that there is unquestionably an epidemic influence, or atmospheric constitution, which sometimes, in extensive districts of country, in villages, in towns, and cities, and especially in crowded lying-in hospitals, determines, by an unknown force, the attack of childbed fever, and so modifies the pathognomonic conditions as to hurry numerous victims to the grave, and this, notwithstanding the most reasonable methods of cure.”
But that the disease is really communicable from one patient to another, is not so palpable. ”

“ Persons often wonder how it is that they feel worse after sleeping than before. When one lies down, if the clothing be left on, too much heat is retained about the surface, and thus debility, instead of refreshment, is experienced. This day-sleeping should be done with the stomach empty, as at three or more hours after a meal, and not in the afternoon, as that would be liable to cause wakefulness at night. It is truly surprising how much, under favorable circumstances, a short sleep even will refresh the powers of life. ”

“ Shall we gratify every whim of a nervous, unhealthy person, or shall we rather advise her to live on plain and wholesome food, at the same time directing her to occupy herself, body and mind, as a reasonable being should? ”

“ Do we not find that people who go to sea are generally benefited in health thereby, and that none are so much benefited as those who are made sick? And how are they thus benefited? I answer, by the abstinence and fasting which they are compelled to practice. Almost all persons—all, I will say—have more or less of impurity in their bodies, so badly have we treated 135ourselves, and so badly do we live. Hence it is that in sea-sickness, and in the vomiting that occurs in pregnancy, benefit is received; the body is made to purify itself by its own inherent power. ”

“ Every thing that goes to injure the mother during the period of lactation operates powerfully upon the mammary secretion, deteriorating it in the same proportion that it acts as an unfriendly agent upon her. This secretion, too, be it remembered, is one of the very first of the fluids of the body to become affected under unfavorable circumstances. We know how quickly the milk of a distillery-fed cow becomes impoverished and unhealthy, when the improper food is given to the cow; and precisely the same great physiological principles hold good in the woman as the animal. ”

“ Now here, where there is a cold, as we say, which means heat and inflammation, should we apply hot things? Certainly not; but rather cold. And yet I would not use cold too much; never more than the individual can safely bear.
This, then, is the plain treatment for acute suppression of the menses: do all that may be in fortifying the general health of the individual.
If at any time there is shivering, or rigors, apply the rubbing wet-sheet, rubbing briskly over it, and then let the patient go and exercise in the open air. ”

“ If we could but take into our minds the whole scope of nature, and if we were able to trace, like the Infinite Mind, causes and effects, we should, doubtless, much oftener than we now are, be struck with the evident goodness of the Creator, even in the physical sufferings which He has made it our lot to endure. What is the office of nausea and vomiting in these cases? It is possible, under bad management, for these symptoms to become actually alarming in their extent. But what, it is well for us to inquire, is the design of these occurrences, so common during the period of gestation? ”

“ In regard to the prevention of this disease, all that I have said or can say concerning the means of fortifying and invigorating the general health, would be as appropriate in this as in any other place. May I not hope that when you consider, each and any one of you, how troublesome this disease is, and how bad a state of things it indicates, that you will use your best influence upon those around you—that by a correct, systematic course of living, its attacks may be warded off. It is far easier, as well as more desirable, to prevent hysteria than to cure it. ”

“ Depend upon it, friends, there are only two things that can induce men to practice midwifery; and these are, first, that it may be necessary for a man so to do, in order to get his living; and, secondly, if he be a benevolent man, he will most gladly relieve suffering, if he can be the means of doing so. And do not physicians, almost to a man, the world over, attend the poor in childbirth, gladly and willingly, when they know they are to receive from them no pay whatever, except such as God gives them? ”

“ Suppose it be only one in fifty, one hundred, or one thousand, that is to be attacked under such circumstances with a threatening and most dangerous malady, who is there that wishes his wife, sister, or friend to be that one—and that one, too, to be subjected to the treatment of an ignorant or unprincipled quack, whether of the male or female stamp? It is for the cases of exception, then, and not the rule, that physicians should toil long and hard in their efforts to remedy the ills to which human nature now is and ever must be subject. ”

“ Usually after delivery, the woman experiences more or less pain in or about the abdomen, generally in the womb or the back, constituting what is termed “after-pains;” these are called after-pains, because they occur after delivery.
It is an important fact, one well worth considering, that as a rule, no after-pains worth mentioning are experienced during the first confinement. Do women become weakened necessarily by giving birth to children? Are their cares and duties too many as they become mothers, in the present state of society? ”

“ The period at which woman may be said truly to arrive at her womanhood, is certainly, in the present state of artificial life, fraught with many dangers to the future health. But, on the other hand, we have proof the most positive and indubitable—the proof of facts—that if young girls are brought up in a simple, judicious manner, and if all their habits—social, moral, physiological, and hygienic—be correct, there can be, as a general law, no danger at the coming on of puberty. ”

“ The great cause of heart-burn in pregnancy, as well as in other cases, is acidity of the stomach; and acidity of the stomach comes from improper food. Very seldom, indeed, can a pregnant woman be troubled with heart-burn, acidity of the stomach, or vomiting, if the dietetic and other habits be regulated according to principle. Pregnant women, in this country of abundance, generally eat a great deal too much food. They have also too little exercise in the open air. Some, indeed, have too much exercise, as in doing household work; but more are injured by doing too little than too much. ”

“ Take the healthiest animals—not the sickly, stall-fed ones of our cities, but those of the country—and such as never manifested any signs of sickness whatever; do they not suffer pain when they bring forth? I speak from a knowledge of the facts when I tell you they do. They sometimes even die in the process, and they always manifest signs of distress, even as a premonitory symptom when labor is about to come on. How, indeed, could there be such a displacement of living, vital parts as occurs in a labor without there being pain? ”