pseud. Aristotle

“ Signs.—At the approaching of the suffocation, there is a paleness in the face, weakness of the legs, shortness of breath, frigidity of the whole body, with a working in the throat, and then she falls down as one void of sense and motion; the mouth of the womb is closed up, and being touched with the fingers feels hard. ”

“ He whose hair grows thick on his temples and his brow, one may at the first sight certainly conclude that such a man is by nature simple, vain, luxurious, lustful, credulous, clownish in his speech and conversation, and dull in his apprehension. He whose hair not only curls very much, but bushes out, and stands on end, if the hair be white, or of a yellowish colour, he is by nature proud and bold, dull of apprehension, soon angry, given to lying, malicious, and ready to do any mischief. ”

“ And if the waters be not come down, then without difficulty may they be let forth; when, if the infant should attempt to break out with the head foremost or cross, he may gently turn it to find the feet; which having done, let him draw forth the one and fasten it to the riband, then put it up again, and by degrees find the other, bringing them close and even, and let the woman breathe, urging her to strain, in helping nature to perform the birth, and that the hold may be surer, wrap a linen cloth about the child’s thighs observing to bring it into the world with its face downwards. ”

“ It would be an easy task to continue this chapter much farther, by attempting to pourtray the beauty and virtue of marriage, and endeavouring to enforce the obligation of it on all who are proper subjects to engage in it, but we will now close the chapter by saying, that the instincts of nature yearn towards the opposite sex. We long to love and be loved. We feel that within us which inclines us to seek the society of the other sex; a monitor that warns us to refrain from unhallowed love: and a voice which invites us to seek that state of matrimony, which is sanctioned by human and divine law. ”

“ In showing the duty of a midwife, when the child-bearing woman’s labour is unnatural, it will be requisite to show, in the first place, what I mean by unnatural labour; for that women do bring forth children in pain and sorrow is natural and common to all. Therefore that which I call unnatural is, when the child comes to the birth in a contrary posture to that which nature ordained, and in which the generality of children come into the world. ”

“ I would therefore lay down, as a general rule, that whensoever a child presents itself wrong to the birth, in what posture soever, from the shoulders to the feet, it is the best way, and the soonest done, to draw it out by the feet; and that it is better to search for them, if they do not present themselves, than to try to put them into their natural posture, and place the head foremost ”

“ A face apt to sweat at every motion, shows the person to be of a hot constitution, vain and luxurious, of a good stomach, but a bad understanding, and a worse conversation. A very fleshy face shows the person to be of a fearful disposition, but a merry heart, and withal bountiful and discreet, easy to be entreated, and apt to believe every thing. A lean face, by the rules of physiognomy, denotes the person to be of a good understanding, but somewhat capricious and disdainful in his conversation. ”

“ Its use or proper action, in the work of generation, is to receive and retain the seed, and deduce from its power and action, by its heat for the generation of the infant; and is therefore absolutely necessary for the conservation of the species. It also seems by accident to receive and expel the impurities of the whole body, as when women have abundance of whites; and to purge away, from time to time, the superfluity of the blood, as when a woman is not pregnant. ”

“ It is not only difficult, but absolutely impossible, to ascertain the exact degree of virulence that may attend the disease; for which reason it will always be a much safer rule to continue the use of medicine too long, than to leave it off too soon. This seems to be the leading maxim of a modern practitioner of some note for the venereal disease, who always orders his patients to perform a quarantine of forty days, during which time he takes forty bottles of, I suppose, a strong decoction of sarsaparilla, or some other antivenereal simple. ”

“ Ecstatic and soul-cheering are the delights which spring from a trusting, loving, and honourable marriage. How the very presence of the loved wife is prized! For should circumstances cause a short separation, with what anxiety does the fond husband look for the return of her on whom his soul doats; and whose returning presence throws a halo of sunshine over his domestic hearth, which gladdens the heart of the loving husband. How the faithful husband will seek to shield the loving wife from every harm ”

“ He whose eye-lids bend downwards when he speaks to another, or when he looks upon him, and who has a kind of skulking look, is by nature a penurious wretch, close in all his actions, of a very few words, but full of malice in his heart. ”

“ Vicious indulgence is certain to produce its legitimate results, and bring down ruin upon the man or woman who is addicted to the same. Cast your eyes upon the blighted wrecks of what was once female beauty, but now loathsome to behold, notwithstanding the adventitious aid of paint, and all the adjuncts of tawdry finery that may be put on to hide the miserable wrecks of humanity. ”

“ Let a woman, therefore, after conception, observe a good diet, suitable to her temperament, custom, condition, and quality: and if she can, let the air where she ordinarily dwells be clear and well tempered, free from extremes either of heat or cold; for being too hot it dissipateth the spirits too much, and causeth many weaknesses; and by being too cold and foggy, it may bring down rheums and distillations on the lungs, and so cause her to cough, which, by its impetuous motion, forcing downwards, may make her miscarry. She ought always to avoid all nauseous and ill smells ”

“ The woman having conceived, the first thing which is operative in the conception is the spirit whereof the seed is full, which nature quickening by the heat of the womb, stirs up to action. The internal spirits therefore, separate the parts that are less pure, which are thick, cold and clammy, from those that are more pure and noble. The less pure are cast to the outside, and with these the seed is circled round, and the membranes made, in which that seed which is most pure is wrapped round, and kept close together, that it may be defended from cold and other accidents, and operate the better. ”

“ A clever female writer thus speaks of marriage—“Many a marriage begins like the rosy morning, 25and then falls away like a snow-wreath. And why? Because the married pair neglect to be as well pleasing to each other after marriage as before. Endeavour always to please one another; but at the same time keep God in your thoughts.—Lavish not all your love on to-day, for remember that marriage has its to-morrow, likewise, and its day after to-morrow, too. Spare, as one may say, fuel for the winter.—Deceive not one another in small things or in great. ”

“ The husband, perhaps, has a taste for a particular class of literature, and takes a delight in perusing his favourite authors, whilst the wife takes a pleasure in reading works of quite a different description altogether, and persists in maintaining her judgment in opposition to that of her husband, hence unpleasant bickerings and recriminations take place. And as their tastes disagree in regard to the food for the mind, so also they disagree in regard to the food for the body. What she likes, he dislikes, and what he likes, she dislikes. ”

“ The man who would deceive the partner whom he vows to cherish and comfort, or the woman who would practice deception on him whom she vows to honour and obey, deserve to taste the bitter fruit of their own sin and folly. It should ever be known by those who are about to become man and wife, that every matter which they are anxious to conceal before marriage, will, very probably, be disclosed at one time or another ”

“ Great and full eyes in either man or woman, show the person to be for the most part slothful, bold, envious, a bad concealer of secrets, miserable, vain, given to lying, and yet of a bad memory, slow in invention, weak in his intellectuals, and yet very much conceited of that little knack of wisdom he thinks himself master of. ”

“ It seems to an observer, that if such couples ever loved one another, they lavished and exhausted that love in the early days of marriage, and filled up the void by feelings of enmity and strife. This ought not to be the state of a domestic household; for though the wife may be possessed of the key of every drawer and cupboard in the house, if she does not possess the key of her husband’s heart, she is destitute of that which is of more value to her than every other earthly treasure. ”

“ One little lie has, before now, disturbed a whole married life.—A small cause has often great consequences.—Fold not the hands together and sit idle. ‘Laziness is the devil’s cushion!’ Do not run much from home. ‘One’s own hearth is gold-worth.’—The married woman is her husband’s domestic faith; in her hands he must be able to confide house and family; be able to entrust to her the key of his heart, as well as the key of his eating-room. ”

“ Now to sum up the whole, and show how this concerns physiognomy, is thus: as the body of man, as we have shown, is not only governed by the signs and planets, but every part is appropriated to one or another of them, so according to the particular influence of each sign or planet, so governing, is the disposition, inclination, and nature of the person governed. For such and such tokens and marks do show a person to be born under such and such a planet; so according to the nature, power, and influences of the planets, is the judgment to be made of that person. ”

“ The aged pair are still happy in each other’s smile; and the reflection that they have led their children in that good path which shall make their memory blessed, sustains and comforts them in life’s closing scene. ”

“ The time of the child’s being ready for its birth, when nature endeavours to ease it forth, is that which is properly the time of a woman’s labour; nature then labouring to be eased of its burden. And since many child-bearing women (especially the first child) are often mistaken in their reckoning, and so, when they draw near their time, take every pain they meet with for their labour, which often proves prejudicial and troublesome to them, when it is not so; I will in the first section of this chapter, set down some signs, by which a woman may know when the true time of her labour is come. ”

“ THE VAGARIES OF NATURE, IN THE BIRTHS OF MONSTERS. The pleasing anticipations of the wedded pair are sometimes disappointed and seriously blighted by the birth of a deformed and malformed offspring. Sometimes the child is born with some one or more of the usual members of the body deficient; at others there are births of children possessed with more than the usual members of the body; and in various ways the eccentricities of nature are displayed in the production of the fruits of the womb contrary to the usual construction of the human frame. ”

“ In these months child-bearing women are troubled with coughs, heart-beating, fainting, watching, pains in the loins and hips, and bleeding. The cough is from a sharp vapour that comes to the jaws and rough artery from the terms, or the thin part of that blood gotten into the veins of the breast, or falling from the head to the breast; this endangers abortion, and strength fails from watching; therefore purge the humours that come to the breast with rhubarb and agaric, and strengthen the head as in a catarrh, and give sweet lenitives, as in a cough. ”

“ The Divorce Court has been, and is, crowded with applicants for redress, who are the victims of their own folly, and who rushed into the connubial state without having a clear and perfect understanding of each other’s qualifications for rendering the marriage state one of enjoyment.
Again, much misery is often productive of the want of a thorough knowledge of the temper and disposition of each other before the consummation of marriage. The lover finds in the object adored, all perfection ”

“ It is therefore much the better way to let the waters break of themselves; after which the midwife may with ease feel the child by that part which first presents, and thereby discerns whether it comes right, that is, with the head foremost, for that is the most proper and natural way of its birth. If the head comes right, she will find it round, big, hard, and equal ”