"Childbirth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... soft and distensible, so that a seeming impossibility is in due time accomplished without physical damage, though possibly not without intense suffering. However, it is a most gratifying fact that modern medical science may do much to mitigate the pains of childbirth. It is possible, by a proper course of preparation for the expected event, to greatly lessen the suffering usually undergone; and some ladies assert that they have thus avoided real pain altogether. Although the curse pronounced ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... she, "contain the souls of those who have been, like you, my attendants in childbirth, but who, for slighting the advice I gave them, as I now give you, and permitting a spirit of unjust gain to take possession of their hearts, were deprived of life by my husband. Heed well what I say. He comes. ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... 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 who are left ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... 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 ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... some importance in our family at one time. You know that my mother died in childbirth, and that Henry's life as an infant was only saved by this woman's unwearied devotion. She was passionately attached to Henry, and her singular disposition and turn of mind gave her a hold upon him ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... 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 ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... lamb and consecrated by the Pope. In 1471 Pope Paul II expatiated to the Church on the efficacy of this fetich in preserving men from fire, shipwreck, tempest, lightning, and hail, as well as in assisting women in childbirth; and he reserved to himself and his successors the manufacture of it. Even as late as 1517 Pope Leo X issued, for a consideration, tickets bearing a cross and the following inscription: 'This cross measured ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... of the healing art, that of midwifery, has been enhanced quite as much as general surgery by the employment of Listerism. The process of childbirth, although a perfectly natural one, almost necessarily carries with it a certain amount of laceration, and, through the wound surfaces thus produced, absorption of poisonous material was formerly so frequent that puerperal fever ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... with regard to property, also in regard to children, the law is unjust to women. The mother has to undergo much in bringing a child to maturity—the agony of childbirth... the countless cares of tending and watching by night and day. The child becomes the darling of her heart, the image of her dreams, the great centre of her thoughts and hopes; and after all her toils, the law permits a husband to take the child permanently out of ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... this law of reciprocal honor has been all the while secretly working, and now the time has come for judgment to fall. Hophni and Phineas, the degenerate priests, fall in battle, the wife of Hophni dies in childbirth, Israel flees before her enemies, the ark of God is captured by the Philistines and the old man Eli falls backward and dies of a broken neck. Thus stark utter tragedy followed upon Eli's failure ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... Bruce, the great Spanish hero is represented as exhibiting, on many occasions, great gentleness of disposition and compassion. But while old Barbour is contented with such simple anecdotes as that of a poor laundress being suddenly taken ill with the pains of childbirth, and the king stopping the march of his army rather than leave her unprotected, the minstrels of Spain, never losing an opportunity of gratifying the superstitious propensities of their audience, are sure to let no ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... talking quickly, quickly in French, you know: Il faut le battre, le fer, le brayer, le petrir.... And in my horror I tried to wake up, and woke up...but woke up in the dream. And I began asking myself what it meant. And Korney said to me: 'In childbirth you'll die, ma'am, you'll die....' ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... what had become of her child, steadily maintaining that she was not mistaken when she assured them that she had given birth to one. The midwife with great effrontery told her that the new moon was unfavourable to childbirth, and that she must wait for the wane, when it would be easier as ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not worthy of having their days observed, that he was surnamed the exposer of the saints. He did not think, for instance, that if St. Margaret's prayer were applied as a poultice to a woman in travail that the pains of childbirth ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... them as well as I know her—and so it goes on. Wineland does not fail of getting discovered, but meantime some new people have been born into the world who do the business of discovering while doing their own human business of love and marriage and childbirth. ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... 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 ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... and said she did not know how she could manage, pay the doctor, and the like, but she did not say much about it to her mother (because the latter would have made such a fuss about it, or would have said, "It serves you right"). Then the childbirth came. This further accentuated her worries. She felt her difficult circumstances, wondered how she could get the necessary money, "I lay there worrying." And she claimed she did not sleep at all. ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... 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 ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... 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 ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... 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 fear of being detected ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... passed, and neither of the twain ever ventured to start a conversation upon this episode. Ella seemed to be only too frequently in a sad and listless mood, which might almost have been called pining. The time was approaching when she would have to undergo the stress of childbirth for a fourth time, and that apparently did not ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... OF HEALTH displays models and graphic and historical exhibit materials to demonstrate the function of the various healthy organs of the human body. The main topics emphasized are: embryology and childbirth; tooth structure; the heart and blood circulation; respiration; the endocrine glands; kidneys and the urinary-excretory system; the brain and the nervous system; the ear; and vision and the ...
— History of the Division of Medical Sciences • Sami Khalaf Hamarneh
... he would to explain her sufferings as the common results of childbirth, he could not help resolving them in the old flattering solution. She was paying the penalty of having married the wrong man. And she was to blame. Whatever the compulsion put upon her, she ought to have withstood it. There was no situation ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... processes of this excellent man. 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 to run and hide when they saw Mrs. Dyer coming. A little later the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... allowed to stay in bed only two or three days after childbirth; then were forced to go into the fields to work, as ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... difficulties were thickening round the Queen. In her passionate longing for an heir who would carry on her religious work Mary had believed herself to be with child; but in the summer of 1555 all hopes of any childbirth passed away, and the overthrow of his projects for the permanent acquisition of England to the House of Austria at once disenchanted Philip with his stay in the realm. But even had all gone well it was impossible for the king to remain longer ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... 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 ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... die strong than live weak. And Juba—why should she have this pride for him? For she felt pride, pangs as real as the pangs of childbirth. There are different kinds of pride, but the worst kind of pride is pride in strength, pride in power. And she knew that was what she felt. She was sinning with full knowledge and she could not put her ...
— Step IV • Rosel George Brown
... three 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 ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... to say of the American earth-goddesses, Toci, "our mother," and goddess of childbirth among the ancient Mexicans (509. 494); the Peruvian Pachamama, "mother-earth," the mother of men (509. 369); the "earth-mother" of the Caribs, who through earthquakes manifests her animation and cheerfulness to her children, the Indians, who forthwith imitate her in joyous dances (509. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... belief in that dogma before they were permitted to teach even arithmetic or geometry; in England, the denunciation of inoculation against smallpox; in Scotland, the protests against using chloroform in childbirth as "vitiating the primal curse against woman"; in France, the use in clerical schools of a historical text-book from which Napoleon was left out; and, in America, the use of Catholic manuals in which the Inquisition is declared to have been a purely civil tribunal, or Protestant manuals in which ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... parties of Indians had stolen out of the dismal woods behind the houses and farms of Wells, and approached different dwellings of the far-extended settlement at about the same time. They entered the cabin of Thomas Wells, where his wife lay in the pains of childbirth, and murdered her and her two small children. At the same time they killed Joseph Sayer, a neighbor of ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... changed, poor man; never to culminate again. He had got, at the beginning of the Year, the high Maria Theresa's one Sister, Archduchess Maria Anna, to Wife; [Age then twenty-five gone: "born 14th September, 1718; married to Prince Karl 7th January, 1744; died, of childbirth, 16th December same year" (Hormayr, OEsterreichischer Plutarch, iv. erstes Baudchen, 54).] the crown of long mutual attachment; she safe now at Brussels, diligent Co-Regent, and in a promising family-way; he here walking on victorious:—need any man ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... application of the international conventions adopted at Bern 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 unhealthful work, of women before and after childbirth, including maternity benefit, and of children as regards ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... 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 with a patience inspired by the thought of her place in the pilgrimage ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... attacking the ranks of the enemy with spear and sword and with great handfuls of stone, but when the blood had ceased to flow and the wound grew dry, the pain became great. As the sharp pangs which the Eilithuiae, goddesses of childbirth, daughters of Juno and dispensers of cruel pain, send upon a woman when she is in labour—even so sharp were the pangs of the son of Atreus. He sprang on to his chariot, and bade his charioteer drive to the ships, for he was ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... that any woman's heart could desire, but in return for your goodness she gave you children. You have lost her, but you have gained an heir, and a beautiful girl baby who will grow to be another Dona Rosa. I grieved as you grieve, once upon a time, for my woman died in childbirth, too. You remember? But my daughter lives, and she has brought sunshine into my old age. That is the purpose of children." He paused and shifted his weight uncertainly, digging his stiff black toes into the dirt. After a time he said, slowly: "Excellency! ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... 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
... 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: it can ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... 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 the lady's illness. The fact of ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... writes in the spring to Atticus a letter from Antium, and we first hear that Tullia is dead. She had seemed to recover from childbirth; but her strength did not suffice, and she was no more.[154] A boy had been born, and was left alive. In subsequent letters we find that Cicero gives instructions concerning him, and speaks of providing ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... 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. "When Edward Turner (one of ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... prikonsiligxi. Deliberation prikonsiligxo. Delicacy frandajxo. Delicate delikata. Delightful rava, cxarmega. Delinquent kulpulo. Delirium deliro. Deliver (save) savi. Deliver (liberate) liberigi. Deliver (goods) liveri. Delivery (childbirth) nasko. Dell valeto. Delude trompi. Deluge superakvego. Delusion trompo. Demagogue demagogo. Demand postulo. Demean humili. Demeanour konduto. Demesne bieno—ajxo. Demise morto. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... 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 conditions and surroundings." Largely as a result of this study, Dutchess County now has ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... thing: Sorrow childbirth still must bring, Sorrow 'tis to have a son!' 'Ay, still sorrow, I can tell! Mete it by the pain of hell, Since more ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... not to his own; for he declared that he should die when his illness attacked him, and so he passed away. Some persons who took refuge from external danger, under the protection of the Blessed, our fathers Ignatius and Xavier, were preserved alive. To three women Ignatius granted easy childbirth; and one Basque they relieved of toothache, when he prayed to them. Xavier came to the aid of a Spanish commander of a battalion of soldiers, who was near to death; and prolonged his life in return for two wax candles ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... nurse, who was what the doctor calls a croaker, began on a long series of stories of ladies who, having "let themselves down" had died, either at childbirth or ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... 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 had been immediately made a great favourite by the Queen of Scots, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lamentable controversy, which divided and embittered the Jews of all Europe, which stirred up Kings and Courts, originated in the accusation against the Chief Rabbi of the Three Communities that the amulets which he—the head of the orthodox tradition—wrote for women in childbirth, were tainted with the Sabbatian heresy. So bitter and widespread were the charges and counter-charges, that at one moment every Jewish community in Europe stood excommunicated by the Chief Rabbis of one side or the other—a ludicrous position, whereof the sole advantage ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 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, and golden hair were immensely admired by folk themselves ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... Zossima stood on the top step, put on his stole, and began blessing the women who thronged about him. One crazy woman was led up to him. As soon as she caught sight of the elder she began shrieking and writhing as though in the pains of childbirth. Laying the stole on her forehead, he read a short prayer over her, and she was at ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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
... childbirth, n. parturition, accouchement, childbed, lying-in, travail, labor, childbearing. Associated Words: tocology, midwife, midwifery, parturient, maieutic, layette, obstetrics, obstetrician, celation, puerperal, accoucheur, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... 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 ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... will often be merely from a desire to imitate their elders. In many instances, even, in which the genital organs play a part in such imitation, we must distinguish what is done from the sexual life proper of the child. If children play at "father and mother," if the "midwife" comes, and "childbirth" takes place, the play may certainly depend upon an early awakening of the sexual life; but this is not necessarily the case. There may be no more than innocent imitation of grownups, as the following ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... the 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 ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... seemed magnificently consistent with the rest of nature, and she had been comforted as she lay moaning by a persistent vision of a harrow turning up rich earth. But contemplating herself as she performed this act of childbirth without a pang was like looking into eyes which are open but have no sight and realising that here is blindness, or listening to one who earnestly speaks words which have no meaning and realising ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... The future years shall make answer by many things. Will she bear sons to her husband? If so, will her young body have strength for the pains of childbirth and the torturings of ignorant and brutal midwives? Will her Karma spare to her the life of husband and children? In India sudden death is never far; pestilence walks in darkness and destruction wastes at noon ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... distinguish between the clean and the unclean. Laws concerning the animals which may or may not be eaten—quadrupeds, fish, birds, flying insects, creeping insects, reptiles—and pollution through contact with carcasses (xi.). Laws concerning the purification of women after childbirth (xii.). Laws for the detection of leprosy in the human body, xiii. 1-46, and in garments, xiii. 47-59. Laws for the purification of the leper and his re-adoption into the theocracy, xiv. 1-32. Laws concerning ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... of Cotton's church was Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, who knew Cotton in England and had crossed the sea to hear his teachings. After her arrival, in June, 1636, she made herself very popular by her ministrations "in time of childbirth and other occasions of bodily infirmities." Soon she ventured to hold open meetings for women, at which the sermons of the ministers furnished the subject of comment. From a mere critic of the opinions of others Mrs. Hutchinson gradually presumed to act the part ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... 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 law is perfectly logical only if you ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... the village 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," says he, in one of his letters, "that, forgetting I was in a strange country, I began ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... began to be worshipped in Rome, it is certain that the idea of chance did not enter into the concept of her until long after Servius's day. Instead the early Fortuna was a goddess of plenty and fertility, among mankind as a protectress of women and of childbirth, among the crops and the herds as a goddess of fertility and fecundity. Her full name was probably Fors Fortuna, a name which survived in two old temples across the river from Rome proper, in Trastevere, where she was worshipped in the country by the farmers ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... giving 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 reason ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... the artificial sleep to alleviate the pains of childbirth, is the perfect expression of the scientific and materialistic elimination of fear. By a chemical blackout of the mind, a dimming of the conscious self, the person is enabled to escape the necessity of facing and conquering ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... is not unnatural that Dickens stayed there for a whole book. The essential point for us here, however, is that Master Humphrey's Clock was stopped by the size and energy of the thing that had come of it. It died in childbirth. ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... loving and compassionate. If that were so, then this was the ideal place to witness the infinite goodness and compassion of the Creator of all earthlings. But, the first scene to meet his gaze was that of a woman in childbirth. The torture, the excruciating pain, and the mental anguish of the human female before his eyes, defied his Martian power of expression. This process of birth, it was explained to him, was not ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... 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 a ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... innumerable army of my ancestors rejoicing in past deeds. Thus novels begin to touch not the fine DILETTANTI but the gross mass of mankind, when they leave off to speak of parlours and shades of manner and still-born niceties of motive, and begin to deal with fighting, sailoring, adventure, death or childbirth; and thus ancient outdoor crafts and occupations, whether Mr. Hardy wields the shepherd's crook or Count Tolstoi swings the scythe, lift romance into a near neighbourhood with epic. These aged things ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... also tithes of all other personal property acquired. Further, a small annual tax was due the Church for every building in the land from a palace to a pig-sty; also a fee for every wedding, death, or childbirth. No one could inherit property, or even take the sacrament, without a contribution to the Church. And every peasant was bound one day each year to labor for his pastor without reward.[77] How all ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... 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 ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... sheriff's officer, one of the parties searching for them, should accept a bribe of three pounds not to find them. In short, although she lost a lace which Thome Reid gave her out of his own hand, which, tied round women in childbirth, had the power of helping their delivery, Bessy Dunlop's profession of a wise woman seems to have flourished indifferently well till it drew the evil eye ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... their fancy and with a higher note of sincerity in their grief are the epitaphs on young mothers, dead in childbirth: Athenais of Lesbos, the swift-footed, whose cry Artemis was too busy with her woodland hounds to hear; Polyxena, wife of Archelus, not a year's wife nor a month's mother, so short was all her time; Prexo, ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... there lived at Calb, 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 in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... execrable—which records a husband's sorrow on account of the death of his young wife—a princess of both the distinguished houses of Chigi and Odescalchi—who passed away at the age of twenty, in the saddest of all ways—in childbirth. It goes to one's heart to think of the desolate home and the bereaved husband left, as he says, "in solitude and grief." And though the weeper has gone with the wept, and the sore wound which death inflicted has been healed by his own hand nearly a ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... of the intimates rose; and, looking at the entertainer, said to him, "O my lord, may be thou wilt give me leave to retire?" "And why so early retirement this day?"; asked he and the other answered him, "My wife is in childbirth and I may not be absent from her: indeed I must return and see how she does." So he gave him leave, whereupon another rose and said, "O my lord Nur al-Din, I wish now to go to my brother's for he circumciseth his son to- day."[FN26] In short each and every asked permission ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... maiden possessed the beauty of her mother, who had died in childbirth; and in honor of that celebrated favorite of Abderamus III. she had been christened "Flower of the World." Nor was the title too immoderate, as all men who saw her vowed. Already the hot sun of Catalonia had ripened her charms, and neighboring lords were beginning to make extravagant overtures of ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... therefore far behind the more intelligent legislation of Belgium, France, and Germany, which considers at all times their sanitary condition, and requires a period of rest for some weeks before and after childbirth. The best that can be said of them, therefore, is that they are a beginning. No law has attempted to prescribe the social condition of female industrial laborers, the bill introduced in Connecticut that no married woman should ever be allowed to work ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... him with carbine and spears; in front of them, their three-year-old daughter toddled. Between vanguard and rearguard, the rest of the party walked: Varnis, carrying her baby on her back, and Dorita, carrying a baby and leading two other children. The baby on her back had cost the life of Kyna in childbirth; one of the others had been left motherless when Eldra had been killed ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... place this for the scoffer. Apart from the mere pleasure of the eye, there was ample justification for Turnham's transports. Were they not in the presence of one of life's sublimest mysteries—that of motherhood? Not alone the lovely Emma: no; every woman who endured the rigours of childbirth, to bring forth an immortal soul, was ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... 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
... with the machinery-part of the business, and who was a medium himself, transmitted to the lady a request from the spirits that she would visit said Spear at High Rock on a certain day. She did so, of course; and while there was unexpectedly taken with the pains of childbirth, which the spiritualist authorities say, were "internal"—where should they be, pray?—and "of the spirit rather than of the physical nature; but were, nevertheless, quite as uncontrollable as those of the latter, and not less severe." The ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... you might compare it to childbirth. The fact that there is pain in childbirth, or, if through modern medical science, the pain is eliminated, is beside the point. Childbirth consists of a new baby coming into the world. The mother might even die, but childbirth has taken place. She might feel no pain whatsoever, ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... their analogues in the converts of missionaries in China, Africa and elsewhere. Another way in which a demon is held to cause disease is by introducing itself into the patient's body and sucking his blood; the Malays believe that a woman who dies in childbirth becomes a langsuir and sucks the blood of children; victims of the lycanthrope are sometimes said to be done to death in the same way; and it is commonly believed in Africa that the wizard has the power of killing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... of 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 ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... prayers are addressed to the souls of ancestors appear to be always temporal benefits, such as victory over enemies and plenty of food; prayers for the promotion of moral virtue are seemingly unknown. For example, if a woman laboured hard in childbirth, she was thought to be bewitched, and prayers would be offered to the spirits of dead ancestors to counteract the spell. Again, young men are instructed by their elders in the useful art of cursing the enemies of the tribe; and among a rich variety of ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... Duevania and K Duenuania. A seems 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
... find the trial of the pucelage and virginity of women, which God ordained the Jews, is very fallible. Experience and history informs me that, not only many particular women, but likewise whole nations, have escaped the curse of childbirth, which God seems to pronounce upon the whole sex; yet do I believe that all this is true, which, indeed, my reason would persuade me to be false: and this, I think, is no vulgar part of faith, to believe a thing not only ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... into atoms all the plans of Mr. Templeton. Mary suffered most severely in childbirth, and died a few weeks afterwards. Templeton at first was inconsolable, but worldly thoughts were great comforters. He had done all that conscience could do to atone a sin, and he was freed from a most embarrassing dilemma, and from a temporary banishment utterly uncongenial ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pregnant or menstrual condition. 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 the doctor's treatment. For this reason all women, excepting those ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... two splendid and edifying sermons in German and English delivered to two large audiences." (383.) October 16, 1763, he wrote: "Pastor Handschuh was called upon to bury a Reformed woman who died in childbirth; he delivered the sermon in the old Reformed church." On October 18, 1763, during the sessions of Synod, and at its request, Whitefield preached in the pulpit of Muhlenberg. In 1767 J. S. Gerock dedicated his new church in New York, "assisted by ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... regard to childbirth, I previously followed the advice of Dr Alice Stockholme in "Tokology," avoiding flesh meats and bone-making food and adopting a diet of fruit (chiefly lemons) and rice, brown bread and nut butter, wearing no corsets and taking frequent baths. The effect during pregnancy was highly satisfactory. ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... chiefly memorable for Verrocchio and Mino da Fiesole. We come to Verrocchio at once, on the left, where his relief of the death of Francesca Pitti Tornabuoni (on a tiny bed only half as long as herself) may be seen. This poor lady, who died in childbirth, was the wife of Giovanni Tornabuoni, and he it was who employed Ghirlandaio to make the frescoes in the choir of S. Maria Novella. (I ought, however, to state that Miss Cruttwell, in her monograph on Verrocchio, questions both the subject and the artist.) Close by we have two more works ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... 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 that had befallen ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... Death and Trouble, 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 to ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... iron bar was run between the blocks to prevent any movement; then, after being stripped, they were whipped. Della said that she knew of but one case of this type of punishment being administered a Ross slave. Sickness was negligible—childbirth being practically the only form of ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... originally Couvreur—was born toward the end of the seventeenth century in the little French village of Damery, not far from Rheims, where her aunt was a laundress and her father a hatter in a small way. Of her mother, who died in childbirth, we know nothing; but her father was a man of gloomy and ungovernable temper, breaking out into violent fits of passion, in one of which, long afterward, he died, raving and yelling like ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... four children, three of whom, all daughters, lived to grow up. The mother died in childbirth in 1652, being then twenty-six years ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... morals chiefly in 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 54 Unnecessary suffering 57 Goethe's ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... replied that he was disposed to think that cases of the ailments I spoke of were not numerous. Cancer was certainly rare. He knew that in Japan rickets, goitre and gout were all less common than in the West. He expressed the opinion that childbirth was easier than in the West. It was a delight to see the fine carriage of the women and girls astride on the high saddles of the horses.[197] Both sexes in the district wear over their kimonos blue cotton trousers, something like a plumber's ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... undertake to do it Thyself, and now it is Thy purpose to send me thither. And how, indeed, were it possible for me to accomplish this great matter, to bring the children of Israel up out of Egypt? How could I provide them with food and drink? Many are the women in childbirth among them, many are the pregnant women and the little children. Whence shall I procure dainties for those who have borne babes, whence sweetmeats for the pregnant, and whence tidbits for the little ones? And how may I venture to ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... molten iron, the flaming mine, the whirling machine, the engulfing sea, and hunger always at the door take care of that. Every working man lives in perpetual danger. Compared to him, and compared to any woman in childbirth, a soldier is secure, even under fire. The daily peril, the daily toil, the fear for the daily bread harden most working men and women enough, and for that very reason we should welcome the fine suggestion of Professor William James—his last ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... 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 ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... effects, amounting to L38 8s. 4d., is preserved, and includes: "Mr. Milton's pictures and coat of arms, valued at ten guineas;" and "two Books of Paradise," valued at ten shillings. Of the daughters, Anne married "a master-builder," and died in childbirth some time before 1678; Mary was dead when Phillips wrote in 1694; and Deborah survived until August 24, 1727, dying within a few days of her stepmother. She had married Abraham Clarke, a weaver and mercer in Dublin, who took ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... 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 ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... country at least 15,000 women, it is estimated, died from conditions caused by childbirth; about 7,000 of these died from childbed fever and the remaining 8,000 from diseases now known to be to a great extent preventable or curable," says Dr. Meigs in her summary, "Physicians and statisticians agree that these figures are ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... good connection. It is this difficulty of marrying daughters, save at an intolerable expense to the family, which largely accounts for the universal and keen disappointment of Hindu families when they discover, at childbirth, that a daughter, and not a son, ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... 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, ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... 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 ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... indifference to me now. What was causing me indescribable emotion was the living proof of paternity, this little being who was my own. I felt stupefied in presence of the great mystery of childbirth. My wife was there, fainting, overcame, and the little living creature, my own flesh, my own blood, was squalling and gesticulating in the hands of Jacques. I was overwhelmed, like a workman who had unconsciously produced a masterpiece. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the age of four hundred fourscore forty and four years begat his son Pantagruel, upon his wife named Badebec, daughter to the king of the Amaurots in Utopia, who died in childbirth; for he was so wonderfully great and lumpish that he could not possibly come forth into the light of the world without thus suffocating his mother. But that we may fully understand the cause and reason of the name of Pantagruel which at his baptism was given him, you are ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... poor lad to be carried away on a stretcher by four men, who took him to the prison in the town, where Christophe immediately fell into the deep sleep which, they say, comes to most mothers after the terrible pangs of childbirth. ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... you experiencing the anguish and labors of childbirth? That is splendid and youthful. Those who want them don't ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... Brackett. "Senator, give me the troubles of the grown-ups, childbirth, and losing the first-born with none to follow, the losing of husband and mother, and the approach of old age,—give me them and I'll bear them, but spare me the sorrows and trials of little children which we grown-ups ain't strong enough to ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... 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 ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... though a mother were to ask why she should suffer. There can be no childbirth without suffering, and it is the same in spiritual life. One thing I can tell you. Bors is a true Christian, and consequently is free, and if you cannot as yet be like him, or believe in God as he does, then believe in ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... custom among certain races of low culture in which a father before and after childbirth takes upon himself the duties and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... back for all the benefits thou hast done 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
... elder Thane turned his son out of his home and refused to have anything more to do with him. I understand the young man went to Europe, where he subsisted on an allowance provided by his mother. Thane, senior, died shortly after this. Our client, I am pained to say, died with her babe in childbirth. ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... upon the world of mutability and chance—an orphan child, the only issue of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino and his wife Maddalena, daughter of Jean de la Tour d'Auvergne et de Bourbon. Married in 1518, the delicate young mother died in childbirth the following year, leaving her sweet little baby girl, Caterina, to the ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... soothe her. And even while they wrestled with her spirit someone set light to 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 ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... it makes me feel better," and she smiled and winked away a tear on her lashes, and took his hand while they prayed for "all women labouring of child"—not "in the perils of childbirth"; and the sparrows who had found their way through the guards behind the glass windows chirped above the faded gilt and alabaster family ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... Childbirth was natural and easy with them, as it generally is with all primitive peoples. An Indian woman has been known to give birth to a child, walk half a mile to a stream, step into it and wash both herself and the new-born babe, then return to ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... his brother of England should be so long in being delivered of his big belly. The king sent him word, that, as soon as he was up, he would present so many lights at Notre-dame, as would perhaps give little pleasure to the King of France; alluding to the usual practice at that time of women after childbirth. Immediately on his recovery, he led an army into L'Isle de France, and laid every thing waste with fire and sword. He took the town of Mante, which he reduced to ashes. But the progress of these hostilities was stopped by an accident which soon after put an end to William's ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... are. That 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
... however, which we have placed in the Code made illustrious by our name, we have deemed it right to afford relief to the mother, in consideration of natural justice, of the pains of childbirth, and of the danger and even death which mothers often incur in this manner; for which reason we have judged it a sin that they should be prejudiced by a circumstance which is entirely fortuitous. For if a freeborn woman had not borne three, or a freedwoman four children, she was undeservedly ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... leuk; an' wi' that she leuch an' turned awa, but turned back again or she wan to the door, an' says she—'Maybe ye didna ken 'at she was broucht to bed hersel' aboot a sax ooks ago?'—'Puir leddy!' said I, thinkin' mair o' her evil report nor o' the pains o' childbirth. 'Ay,' says she, wi' a deevilich kin' o' a lauch, like in spite o' hersel', 'for the bairn's deid, they tell me—as bonny a ladbairn as ye wad see, jist ooncoamon! An' whaur div ye think she had her doon lying? Jist at Lossie Hoose!' Wi' that she was oot at ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... mother. She is always a woman of advanced age who has had abundant experience, and "has never lost a case." She is reputed to be versed in many secret medicines and devices necessary for the cure of any ailment proceeding from natural causes and connected with childbirth. I always found the midwife very reluctant to disclose the secrets ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... 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, ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... children cut off by Artemis in infancy, such as bereaved mothers nowadays often treasure for years, having no temple wherein to dedicate them?" Mr. Hicks further remarks that it was usual for the bride before marriage to dedicate her girdle to Artemis; and at Athens the garments of women who died in childbirth were likewise in like manner so dedicated. It is probably on account of such dedications that Artemis was styled Chitone—the ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... there was a miners' agent, who was also one of the well-known local preachers of the district; there were half a dozen women—the schoolmistress, the wife of the manager of the cooeperative store, and three or four wives of colliers—women to whom other women in childbirth, or the girl who had gone astray, or the motherless child, might appeal without rebuff, who were in fact the Rector's agents ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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
... 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
... hers, being left a widow during her pregnancy, died in childbirth, without leaving a sou. Mademoiselle Source took the newborn child, put him out to nurse, reared him, sent him to a boarding-school, then brought him home in his fourteenth year, in order to have in her empty house somebody who would love her, who would look after her, ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... another thing," said Monsieur Martener. "Successful childbirth is then one of those miracles which God sometimes allows ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... God. Hagar's children have no God. They are forsaken! Lost! lost! lost!" Several women came up and took hold of the demented creature and led her away. "She's los' her mind," said one. "She sat here las' night an' saw her dear friend an' neighbor die in the agony of childbirth; and that, with the news of her husband's death has unbalanced her mind." "There lays the woman," said another, taking the minister by the hand and leading him to where—cold and lifeless—the body of the woman with that of the new-born ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... 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 life; a young man, for instance, ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness
... to say that of the above, 2, 3 and 4 were of such frequent occurrence that we did not assign them to the receipt of the bouquet. The gardener however, was convinced that it caused his wife to die in childbirth as she had never done so before. I have no explanation for the "denouement" and give the story as it happened, allowing my readers to judge for themselves whether or no any credence should be given to the fable after ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... this pair are also Kamkamiak, evil antohs of women at childbirth. The offspring of the dogs is another kind of antoh, called Penyakit (sickness). One of these appears in the form of a large goat which is seen only occasionally. It bites in the neck and the throat, the wounds are invisible, and the victim ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... goddess fair, The guardian of the groves and hills, Who hears the girls in their despair Cry out in childbirth's cruel ills, And saves them from the Stygian flow! Let the pine-tree my cottage near Be sacred to thee evermore, That I may give to it each year With joy the life-blood of the boar, Now thinking ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... too absurd; but I gravely observed, "That it was all very true, but unfortunately his mother had died in childbirth, and the only remedy was to bring him ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... of death among women; that the cancer rate of mortality has increased during the last four decades; that it is most common near the time of the menopause; and that there is a direct causal relation between cancer of the neck of the womb and the traumatisms which occur during childbirth. ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... 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 by national rules, by courtship rules and connubial orders from Indianapolis, ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Probably the long period (nine months) elapsing between cohabitation and childbirth confused early speculation on the subject. Then clearly cohabitation was NOT always followed by childbirth. And, more important still, the number of virgins of a mature age in primitive societies was so very minute that the fact of their childlessness attracted no attention—whereas ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... visit with Maulevrier to their Catholic Majesties to carry to them the news of the departure from Paris of the future Princess of the Asturias. During fevers, illness, no matter of what kind, or on whose side, childbirth even,—never were they a single night apart, and even when the deceased Queen was eaten up with the scrofula, the King continued to sleep with her until a ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... her daily labors in the house, the mountains, or the irrigated fields almost to the hour of childbirth. The child is born without feasting or ceremony, and only two or three friends witness the birth. The father of the child is there, if he is the woman's husband; the girl's mother is also with her, but usually there are no others, unless it be ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... some months 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 of his neighbors. ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... sentence: "Thou shalt suffer anguish in childbirth and grievous torture. In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and in the hour of travail, when thou art near to lose thy life, thou wilt confess and cry, 'Lord, Lord, save me this time, and I will never again indulge in carnal pleasure,' and yet thy desire ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... further relates that the Bacabs were sons of Ix-chel. She was the Goddess of the Rainbow, which her name signifies. She was likewise believed to be the guardian of women in childbirth, and one of the patrons of the art of medicine. The early historians, Roman and Landa, also associate her with Itzamna[1], thus verifying the legend recorded ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... of that same year she died in childbirth. He had deserted her. Fortunately for him, he was killed on the Indian frontier, that very year. If she had lived she would have been thirty-two next June; not a great age.... I know I am what they call a crank; doctors will tell you that you can't be cured of a bad illness, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... strong heavy placing of trees, very red . . . is led past them with twisted wattles, weary hands, the eye slants aside (squints) because of one woman. To you the vengeance, to you the heavy ? oxen ? splendour of sovereignty over white men, . . . man sorrow on thee . . . of childbirth, rushes over Tethba, clearing of stones from Meath . . . where the benefit where the evil, causeway over . . . moor." It seems that the oxen were transformed people of Mider's race; this appears from fr-ferdi, which is taken to mean "really men"; and ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... given to an animal about to have young, or to a woman in childbirth—which are further concessions to property and humanity. All might be done on the Sabbath, too, needful for circumcision. On the other hand, bones might not be set, nor emetics given, nor any medical or surgical operation performed. Wine, oil, and bread might be ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... incomprehensible to him, but he was beginning to accept it, perceiving that it had some obscure 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 over it ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... 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
... "History and Miracles 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 ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... the same sort of 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 great laceration ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... company of a young man. During two pregnancies the tendency to constipation was aggravated by the weight of the fetus resting on an already sluggish bowel, and the discomfort of straining to pass my first hard bowel movement after childbirth with a ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... and touch her fingers that were still grasped on the sheet. Her brown-grey eyes opened and looked at him. She did not know him as himself. But she knew him as the man. She looked at him as a woman in childbirth looks at the man who begot the child in her: an impersonal look, in the extreme hour, female to male. Her eyes closed again. A great, scalding peace went over him, burning his heart and his entrails, passing off ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... possible that the gold plate she had once 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 searcher after gold, that saw that wonderful ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... herself to be cared for. Her sunken mouth was set and hard. Suddenly she grasped the young woman by the hips with her earth-stained hands. "'Tis light and pure!" she mumbled, making signs over her. "In childbirth 'twill go badly with you." The woman swayed in her hands and fell to the ground without a sound; little Ditte began ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo |
