"Midwife" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first the babe Was sickly; and a smile was seen to pass Across the midwife's cheek, when, holding up The feeble wretch, she to the father said, "A fine man-child!" What else could they expect? The father being, as I said before, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... all the court, and spread throughout the empire of Persia. Upon this news the two sisters came to pay their compliments, and proffered their service to deliver her, desiring her, if not provided with a midwife, to accept of them. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... tossed the ball from one to another, there being in each department two sets, the individuals of which relieved one another occasionally. Every knot was composed of a waiting-woman, nurse, apothecary, surgeon, and physician, and sometimes a midwife was admitted into the party; and in this manner ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... "A midwife—is that what you want to be, girl?" Peer couldn't help laughing. So this was what she had been planning in these days—since he had offered to help ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... headlong speed. I would willingly, with pleasure, with feeling, in a leisurely way, describe the whole of my hero, describe the state of his mind while his wife was in labour, his trial, the horrid feeling he has after he is acquitted; I would describe the midwife and the doctors having tea in the middle of the night, I would describe the rain.... It would give me nothing but pleasure because I like to rummage about and dawdle. But what am I to do? I begin a story on September 10th with the thought that I must ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... broken without loss of virginity. For Augustine says (De Civ. Dei i, 18) that "those organs may be injured through being wounded by mischance. Physicians, too, sometimes do for the sake of health that which makes one shudder to see: and a midwife has been known to destroy by touch the proof of virginity that she sought." And he adds: "Nobody, I think, would be so foolish as to deem this maiden to have forfeited even bodily sanctity, though she lost the integrity of that organ." Therefore virginity ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... 13 years old my ol' mistress put me wid a doctor who learned me how to be a midwife. Dat was cause so many women on de plantation was catchin' babies. I stayed wid dat doctor, Dr. McGill his name was, for 5 years. I got to be good. Got so he'd sit down an' ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... concerns your secret mission and your discovered conspiracy,' said I to the Austrian ambassador, 'I am sorry that you cannot here give birth to the dear children of your inventive head; go with them to our midwife, Minister Golopkin, and hasten a little, for I see in your face that you are already in the pangs ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... she expected to be delivered, he begged her to try a change of air and remove to his house, where she would recover her health more quickly than at home. Thither she went with but a very small following, and found there a midwife who had been summoned as for her brother's wife, and who one night, without recognising her, delivered her of a fine little girl. The gentleman gave the child to a nurse, and caused it to be ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... of Philip II., was ready to be delivered of him, she commanded that all the lights should be extinguished: that if the violence of her pain should occasion her face to change colour, no one might perceive it. And when the midwife said, "Madam, cry out, that will give you ease," she answered in good Spanish, "How dare you give me such advice? I would rather ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and settling in a distant provincial town, where no one could find her, and where she thought she would be far from her people. But, unfortunately, her father's brother received an appointment there, a thing she could not possibly foresee. For four months she had been living in the house of a midwife—one Maria Ivanovna; and, on learning that her uncle had come to the town, she was preparing to fly to a still ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... the lady's journey to Garnock being the alarming intelligence which she had that day received of Mr. Craig's servant-damsel Betty having, by the style and title of Mrs. Craig, sent for Nanse Swaddle, the midwife, to come to her in her own case, which seemed to Mrs. Glibbans nothing short of a miracle, Betty having, the very Sunday before, helped the kettle when she drank tea with Mr. Craig, and sat at the room door, on a buffet-stool brought from the ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... Mary Bogdanovna be sent for?" said one of the maids who was present. (Mary Bogdanovna was a midwife from the neighboring town, who had been at Bald Hills ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... safest, and by far the cheapest way. The weekly amount paid includes the board of the patient, the routine care, and all appliances and supplies of every sort that will be used. Under no circumstances should a midwife be engaged. Any reputable physician or any intellectual minister will advise that. Let your choice be either the hospital or the home; but always engage a physician, never ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... and sent her to Lizaveta, while he ran to fetch an old midwife who lived close by. They saved the baby, but Lizaveta died at dawn. Grigory took the baby, brought it home, and making his wife sit down, put it on her lap. "A child of God—an orphan is akin to all," he said, "and to us above others. Our little lost one has sent us this, who has come from the ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... were confined on board. The public-spirited citizens of London, famous for acts of beneficence and charity, associated, and chose a committee on purpose to raise money for the relief of these poor Palatines. A physician, a surgeon, and man-midwife, generously undertook to attend the sick gratis. From different quarters benefactions were sent to the committee, and in a few days those unfortunate strangers, from the depth of indigence and distress, were raised to comfortable circumstances. The committee finding the money received ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... to go upstairs again, she went into the drawing-room, where a fire was never lighted, now her parents were away. Soon she saw Simon run out of the house, and come back five minutes after with Widow Dentu, the village midwife. Next she heard a noise on the stairs which sounded as if they were carrying a body, then Julien came to tell her that she could go back to her room. She went upstairs and sat down again before her bedroom fire, trembling as if she had just witnessed ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... Life: his various returns to his Parish: his final Return—Wife of Farmer Frankford dies in Prime of Life: Affliction in Consequence of such Death: melancholy View of Her House &c. on her Family's Return from her Funeral: Address to Sorrow—Leah Cousins, a Midwife: her Character, and successful Practice: at length opposed by Dr. Glibb: Opposition in the Parish: Argument of the Doctor; of Leah: her Failure and Decease—Burial of Roger Cuff, a Sailor: his Enmity to his Family; how it originated: his Experiment and its Consequence—The Register ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... two shirts on, generated an opinion which has now become fixed and general in that parish, that it is unlucky to wear two shirts at once. We are not certain whether the caul is in general the perquisite of the midwife— sometimes we believe it is; at all events, her integrity occasionally yields to the desire of possessing it. In many cases she conceals its existence, in order that she may secretly dispose of it to good advantage, which she frequently does; for it is considered to ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... sharer in the guilt. There are not only slanderous throats, but slanderous ears also; not only wicked inventions, which engender and brood lies, but wicked assents, which hatch and foster them. Not only the spiteful mother that conceiveth such spurious brats, but the midwife that helpeth to bring them forth, the nurse that feedeth them, the guardian that traineth them up to maturity, and setteth them forth to live in the world; as they do really contribute to their subsistence, so deservedly they partake in the ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... undertakes that no harm shall befall her during his absence. The queen is delivered at one birth of seven lovely children, six boys and one girl, each of whom has a silver chain around its neck.[FN426] The king's mother plots with the midwife to do away with the babes and place seven little dogs in bed beside the poor queen. She gives the children to one of her squires, charging him either to slay them or cast them into the river. But when the squire enters the forest his heart ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... in the beef, called the mouse-piece, which given to the child, or party so affected to eat, doth certainly cure the thrush. From an experienced midwife. ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... us see how this rule will work in other cases; how you can make a compromise between two opposite doctrines. The king of Egypt commanded the Hebrew nurses, 'When you do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, if it be a son ye shall kill him.' I suppose it is plain to the Judge of the Circuit Court that this kind of murder, killing the new-born infants, is against 'the will of God;' but it is a matter of record that ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... kuragxo. Mew katbleki. Miasma miasmo. Mica glimo. Microbe mikrobo. Microscope mikroskopo. Midday tagmezo. Middle centro. Middle meza. Midnight noktomezo. Midsummer duonjaro, somermezo. Midwife akusxistino. Mien mieno. Might potenco. Mighty potenca. Mignonette resedo. Migrate migri. Milch laktodona. Mild dolcxa. Mildew sximo. Mildness dolcxeco. Mile mejlo. Militant milita. Military milita. Military man militisto. Militia militantaro. Milk melki. Milk ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... filled with little, naked urchins, seemingly just ripened into life, and crying for succour: beneath, a woman holds up her apron, looking wistfully at the children, as if intreating them to jump into her lap. On inquiry, I found it to be the house of a sworn midwife, with this Dutch inscription ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... deity selected serves the child through life as a patron saint and protector. Frequently the village barber acts in the place of a priest and puts on the sacred thread. A similar thread placed around the neck of a child, and often around its waist by the midwife immediately after birth, is intended as an amulet or charm to protect from disease and danger. It is usually a strand of silk which has been blessed by some holy man or sanctified by being placed around the neck of an idol ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... Dulcibel Burton. She was a witch from her very birth. Her father sold her to Satan before she was born, that he might prosper in houses and lands. She has the witch's mark—a snake—on her breast, just over her heart. I know it, because goodwife Bartley, the midwife, told me so three years ago last March. Midwife Bartley is dead; but have a jury of women examine her, and you will see that it ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... Pelageya Ivanovna. Pavel Vassilitch and his son abandon arithmetic and go in to tea. Pelageya Ivanovna is already sitting at the table with an aunt who never speaks, another aunt who is deaf and dumb, and Granny Markovna, a midwife who had helped Styopa into the world. The samovar is hissing and puffing out steam which throws flickering shadows on the ceiling. The cats come in from the entry sleepy and melancholy with their tails in ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... babes," said the grey old midwife, bending thoughtfully over them, "I never before ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... piece of furniture like an arm-chair, without legs, for the mother to lean against;[119] a stool, which is used by the lady who embraces the loins of the woman in labour to support her, and which is afterwards used by the midwife in washing the child; several pillows of various sizes, that the woman in child-bed may ease her head at her pleasure; new buckets, basins, and ladles of various sizes. Twenty-four baby-robes, twelve of silk and twelve of cotton, must be prepared; the hems must be dyed saffron-colour. ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... doing here?" he stammered. Hitherto he had been waited on by a strange doctor (Hansombody's new partner) and a nurse whom he had assisted twelve years ago, when she was left a widow, to set up as a midwife. ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tell how she had tried to find a midwife, and how they had demanded ten, fifteen, even twenty-five dollars, and that in cash. "And I had only a quarter," she said. "I have spent every cent of my money—all that I had in the bank; and I owe the doctor who has been coming to see me, and he has stopped because he thinks I don't mean ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Hooked, caught. Hool, the outer case, the sheath. Hoolie, softly. Hoord, hoard. Hoordet, hoarded. Horn, a horn spoon; a comb of horn. Hornie, the Devil. Host, v. hoast. Hotch'd, jerked. Houghmagandie, fornication. Houlet, v. howlet. Houpe, hope. Hove, swell. Howdie, howdy, a midwife. Howe, hollow. Howk, to dig. Howlet, the owl. Hoyse, a hoist. Hoy't, urged (R. B.). Hoyte, to amble crazily (R. B.). Hughoc, dim. of Hugh. Hullions, slovens. Hunder, a hundred. Hunkers, hams. Hurcheon, the hedgehog. Hurchin, urchin. Hurdies, the loins, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... churches. There was also the impression—was it too fantastic—of words carried over a medium, an invisible wire which brought the soul of them and left the body by the way. Duff Lindsay, so eminently responsive and calculable, came running with open arms; in his rejoiceful eye-beam one saw almost a midwife to one's idea. But the comparison was subtly irritating, and after a time she turned from it. She awoke once in the night, moreover, to declare to the stars that she was less worried by the consideration of Arnold's sex than she would have thought it possible ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... While the mother confined to her bed, and incapable of maintaining her own authority, Mrs. Grizzle took charge of the infant baby double claim, and superintended, with surprising vigilance, the nurse and midwife in all the particulars of their respective offices, which were performed by her express direction. But no sooner was Mrs. Pickle in a condition to reassume the management of her own affairs, when she thought proper to alter certain regulations concerning the child, which had obtained in consequence ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... to make her case heard—the case all living things have against the Power that creates them without so much as asking leave. The riot she made being interpreted by both father and uncle as protest against Mrs. Twiggins, a midwife who made herself disagreeable—or, strictly speaking, more disagreeable; being normally unpleasant, and apt to snap when spoke to, however civil—it was thought desirable to call in the help of her Aunt M'riar, who was living with her family at Ealing as ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... bangles in the seventh month; they then put her into a swing and sing songs. While she is pregnant she is made to work in the house so as not to be inactive. After the birth of a child the mother remains impure for twelve days. A woman of the Mang or Mahar caste acts as midwife, and always breaks her bangles and puts on new ones after she has assisted at a birth. If delivery is prolonged the woman is given hot water and sugar or camphor wrapped in a betel-leaf, or they put a few grains of gram into her hand and then someone takes and feeds them ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... him then to understand, He'd have the Midwife hold her hand; But he was answered by the maid, "My Mistress ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... of their peculiar vocation; and this fact enables them successfully, if they like, to dare these parties to treat them any other than respectfully. There is a skeleton in every house, a secret in every family; and too often the doctor, midwife, and accoucheur have to be treated publicly, socially, and pecuniarily in accordance with this fact. It is such men as these who, by their nefarious practices, have been enabled to accumulate a large amount of money, that are the proprietors of private hospitals or lying-in ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... on land, bringing up her long family with much shouting, much hard common sense, some swearing and a deal of useful prejudice. Now, in her second youth—not second childhood—she is mainly a lace-worker and midwife. One night, Tony and myself broke into her cottage, locked the door behind us and helped ourselves to what supper we could find—which was pickled beetroot and raw eggs. Grannie Pinn climbed in upon us through the little window, and afterwards, to gain breath, she sat down to her ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... of Calcutta assemble to see what progress we are making; and we produce as a sample a boy who repeats some blackguard doggerel of George Colman's, about a fat gentleman who was put to bed over an oven, and about a man-midwife who was called out of his bed by a drunken man at night. Our disciple tries to hiccup, and tumbles and staggers about in imitation of the tipsy English sailors whom he has seen at the punch houses. Really, if we can find nothing better worth reciting than this trash, we had better give ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... went forward; yet, more than once recently, Carteret had questioned whether his friend would ever get himself fairly delivered of the admirable volume were not he—Carteret—permanently at hand to act midwife. An unpleasant idea pursued him that Sir Charles went, in some strange fashion, in fear of Damaris, of her criticism, her judgment. Yet fear seemed a hatefully strong and ugly word to employ as between a father and daughter so straitly, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... "It is not here said what shall be done in case a lawful Minister cannot be found; or whether the child ought to be baptized again, or no, when only a midwife, or some other such, hath baptized it before." According to the ancient custom of the church, recognized and affirmed in the case of Mastin v. Estcott (1841), a child baptized by a layman is validly baptized. It follows, that though Baptism by any other than a Bishop, ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown
... line—whose agonizing labours seem to have been eased somewhat by the comfortable ministrations of a black and grinning muse. Midwifery, to be sure, seems an odd occupation for a lady whom one pictures rather in the role of a flapper: but a midwife was what the poet needed, and in that capacity she has served him. Apparently it is only by adopting a demurely irreverent attitude, by being primly insolent, and by playing the devil with the instrument of Shakespeare and Milton that Mr. Eliot is able occasionally to deliver ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... 'Sbud, a man had as good be a professed midwife as a professed whoremaster, at this rate; to be knocked up and raised at all hours, and in all places. Pox on 'em, I won't come. D'ye hear, tell 'em I won't come. Let 'em snivel and cry ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... show you the way, sir, and I'se warrant ye'll be weel put up; for they never turn awa naebody frae the door; and ye'll be come in the canny moment, I'm thinking, for the Laird's servant— that's no to say his body-servant, but the helper like—rade express by this e'en to fetch the houdie, [*Midwife] and he just staid the drinking o' twa pints o' tippenny, to tell us how my leddy was ta'en ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... labor. Well, well! she shall come. —Observe how earnest the old gossip is, (Coming forward) Because this Lesbia is her pot-companion. —Oh grant my mistress, Heav'n, a safe delivery, And let the midwife trespass any where Rather than here!—But what is it I see? Pamphilus all disorder'd: How I fear The cause! I'll wait a while, that I may know If this commotion means ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... or any part of it, against the new and abler physicians who must come with the growth of the country. You'll not be wanted by your best friends when it comes to a case of life and death. You'll become only a kind of licensed midwife rushing about from one accouchement to another, and, even for this, you must finesse and intrigue in the manner which has made the incompetents of your sex in medicine the bete ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... humbler stones, Sparkling shoots forth the price of nations. Ye safe unriddlers of the stars, pray tell, By what name shall I stamp my miracle? Thou strange inverted Aeson, that leap'st ore From thy first infancy into fourscore, That to thine own self hast the midwife play'd, And from thy brain spring'st forth the heav'nly maid! Thou staffe of him bore him, that bore our sins, Which, but set down, to bloom and bear begins! Thou rod of Aaron, with one motion hurl'd, ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... conceived by him and after three months, her courses ceased and she knew that she was with child. When the days of her pregnancy were accomplished, the pangs of labour took her and they raised cries of joy. The midwife delivered her with difficulty [of a son], then, taking the new- born child, she pronounced over him the names of Mohammed and Ali and said, 'God is Most Great!' Moreover, she called in his ear the call to prayer; then swathed him and gave him to his ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... pregnancies, she suffered nausea. Naturally, a suspicion as to her virtue came into her husband's mind, but when he considered that she had never left her bed for fifteen months he thought the pregnancy impossible. Still the wife insisted that she was pregnant and was confirmed in the belief by a midwife. The belly continued to increase, and about eleven months after the cessation of the menses she had the pains of labor. Three doctors and an accoucheur were present, and when they claimed that the fetal ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... a year after the loss of my brother that I was ushered into the world, without any other assistants or spectators than my father and Dame Nature, who I believe to be a very clever midwife if not interfered with. My father, who had some faint ideas of Christianity, performed the baptismal rites by crossing me on the forehead with the end of his pipe, and calling me Jacob: as for my mother being churched, she had never been but once to church in her life. In fact, my father ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... heredity was strongly tainted with mental disease, had strong sexual instincts partly inverted. He was attracted rather more by men than by women, but committed excesses with both sexes. He married a virtuous and intelligent midwife. At long intervals he had three attacks of acute mania, but was cured after each attack and procreated two boys and a girl. When he was sane he spent his time in deceitful occupations and speculation and ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... the astrologers managed subsequently to reckon very auspicious for me, may have been the causes of my preservation; for, through the unskilfulness of the midwife, I came into the world as dead; and only after various efforts was I enabled to see the light. This event, which had put our household into sore straits, turned to the advantage of my fellow-citizens, inasmuch as my grandfather, the /Schultheiss/ [Footnote: A chief judge or magistrate of ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... where Churms and Lelia comes along: He walks as stately as the great baboon. Zounds, he looks as though his mother were a midwife. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... the first manner of printing. In this short discouse [Transcriber's Note: discourse] I have explained myself when I design to treat of it in the famous subject of the Art of Printing. It hath been the labour of several years past, and if now I shall have assistance to midwife it into the world, I shall be well satisfied for the sake of the curious. For these 10 years past I have spared no cost in collecting books on this subject, and likewise drafts of the effigies of our famous printers, with other designs that will be needful on this subject. If this ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... reduced to a new extremity; the pains of child-bearing came upon her, before she could make any provision for her delivery, but providence interposed on their behalf at this time also: While she travailed in the night-season, and the good man knew not where to apply for a midwife, a gentlewoman came early in the morning riding to the door, and having sent her servant back with the horse, with orders when to return. She went in, and asked the maid of the house, How her mistress was, and desired access to her, which she obtained; she first ordered a good fire to ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... the new dogmas. That other phase was the driving power of instinct, a power uncontrolled and unnoticed. The great fundamental instinct of sex was expressing itself in these ever-growing broods, in the prosperity of the slum midwife and her colleague the slum undertaker. In spite of all my sympathy with the dream of liberated Labor, I was driven to ask whether this urging power of sex, this deep instinct, was not at least partially responsible, ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... respect to births, baptisms, and burials, are also curious. When the mother feels the fulness of time at hand, the priestess of Lucina, the midwife, is duly summoned, and she comes bearing in her hand a tripod, better known as a three-legged stool, the uses of which are only revealed to the initiated. She is received by the matronly friends of the mother, and begins the mysteries by opening every lock and lid in the house. During this ceremony ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... with the earliest days of infancy. After the first bath the new-born child was put into swaddling-clothes, a custom not permitted by the rougher habits of Sparta. On the fifth or seventh day the infant had to go through the ceremony of purification; the midwife, holding him in her arms, walked several times round the burning altar. A festive meal on this day was given to the family, the doors being decorated with an olive crown for a boy, with wool for a girl. On the tenth day after its birth, when the child ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... child was born, I begged the midwife not to cut me open to get the baby out. The midwife told me the same place it went in the same place it will ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... fully satisfied him, so that he ordered his gentleman to dismiss the old woman the same day; and without any difficulty I sent my maid Amy to Calais, and thence to Dover, where she got an English midwife and an English nurse to come over on purpose to attend an English lady of quality, as they styled me, for four ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... months were fulfilled to Anna, she brought forth, and said to the midwife, 'What have I brought forth?' And ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... this winter in Loddin, who used to be the midwife in the parish, and had also brought my child into the world. Of late, however, she had had but little to do, seeing that in this year I only baptized two children, namely, Jung his son in Uekeritze, and Lene Hebers her little ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... There was some delay in bringing the image, so that the father reached the sick woman first; and after he had confessed her the image arrived. The poor woman was much exhausted, and, according to the midwife, in extreme danger. The infant was dead, and as it lay obliquely in the womb, the mother could not obtain relief by expelling it. The father exhorted her to have confidence in our Lord, and placing the image before her, left her calling loudly to heaven in her anguish. A second time ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... Council of Connecticut paid Mrs. Allyn L20 for her services to the sick, and Mistress Sarah Sands doctored on Block Island. Sarah Alcock, the wife of a chirurgeon, was also "active in physick;" and Mistress Whitman, the Marlborough midwife, visited her patients on snow-shoes, and lived to be seventy-eight years old, too. In the Phipps Street Burying Ground in Charlestown is the tombstone of a Boston midwife who died in 1761, aged seventy-six years, and who, could ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... have ended. For there is nothing so joysome to record as the brightening story of a soul coming to its real birth from the travail of its sin and struggle. For perchance time itself is God's great midwife, and man's writhing agony is to the end that he may soon ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... died two days after the doctor's visit. She died late in the afternoon. All was silent on the road, in the workshop below, and in the upper room, where a few people from Waltheim went in and out, the minister, the doctor, a distant relative of Maria's and the midwife, who had been taking care of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... above all men living, can never carry on his affairs with profit without a wife, or a mother, or a daughter, or some such person; and mother and daughter imply matrimony. To be sure, a wife would cause some trouble, perhaps, to this young man. There might be the midwife and nurse to gallop after at midnight; there might be, and there ought to be, if called for, a little complaining of late hours; but, good God! what are these, and all the other troubles that could attend a married life; what are they, compared to the one single circumstance of the want ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... little wine was mulled; the girl could not swallow it, emaciated as she was. Her condition need not be described in detail, but she was very near her death, as the medical evidence, and that of a midwife (who consoled Mrs. Canning on one point), ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... Her master brought her away and would have brought her husband but they wouldn't sell. She said durin' her forty years in slavery she never got a whoopin'. She was a field hand. After she come to Mississippi they was so good to her they called her free. She was a midwife. She doctored the rich white and colored. She rode horseback, she said, far and near. In Grenada after freedom she walked. They called her free her master was so good to her. I don't know how she learned to be a midwife. Her master was Henry Pernell. He owned a small ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... and rapidly during the nineteenth century, that it seemed to trouble no one that countless lives of mothers and babies were lost during the perils of child-birth; it remained the only civilised country of Europe where a woman could practise as a midwife without any ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... their Conception, Bearing and Nursing of Children from the experience of our English, viz. Sir Theodoret Mayrn, Dr. Chamberlain, Mr. Nich. Culpepper, with the Instructions of the Queen of Frances Midwife to her Daughter in 8[o]. Large. Illustrated with several Cuts ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... a family match. Prince Francis Charles Augustus Albert Emmanuel of Saxe-Coburg—Gotha—for such was his full title—had been born just three months after his cousin Victoria, and the same midwife had assisted at the two births. The children's grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Coburg, had from the first looked forward to their marriage, as they grew up, the Duke, the Duchess of Kent, and King Leopold came equally to desire it. The Prince, ever since the time when, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... was to unmoor the patricians' gondolas, and to let them float at random along the canals, enjoying by anticipation all the curses that gondoliers would not fail to indulge in. We would rouse up hurriedly, in the middle of the night, an honest midwife, telling her to hasten to Madame So-and-so, who, not being even pregnant, was sure to tell her she was a fool when she called at the house. We did the same with physicians, whom we often sent half ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and after the christening, we were with the woman above in her chamber; but whether we carried ourselves well or ill, I know not; but I was directed by young Mrs. Batten. One passage of a lady that eats wafers with her dog did a little displease me. I did give the midwife 10s. and the nurse 5s. and the maid of the house 2s. But for as much I expected to give the name to the childe, but did not, (it being called John,) I forbore then to give ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... the stairs, where he told her (in a mild but decided tone) that the money before mentioned must be paid quickly for the use of 'the prince (who lodged at the house in Market Street, now called the Palace Inn), or the house would be burnt down.' In this dilemma, the man-midwife calling first, and afterwards the physician, were both consulted by the ladies; when the former (a Tory) advised to send the money after them, whilst the latter (a Whig) thought it better to keep it till called for; consequently, never being called for in their ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... than his years. A great pity seized her for Corona, and in the rush of pity all her oddities and grown-up tricks of speech (Americanisms apart) explained themselves. She was an old father's child. Nurse Branscome was midwife enough to know what freakishness and frailty belong to children begotten by old age. Yet Corona, albeit gaunt with growing, was lithe and well-formed, and of a healthy complexion and a clear, though it ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... other shorter pieces, all of which he declared to be transcripts from manuscripts in Canynge's chest, and the work of Thomas Rowley, a secular priest of Bristol, who flourished about 1460. Catcott was a local book-collector and the partner of Mr. Burgum. He was subsequently nicknamed "Rowley's midwife." ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Lord sent one of his secretaries with answer to my letter, and with offer and promys of all where he can pleasure me, circa 5 post meridiem. March 29th, my Lord and Lady from Trebon toward Crumlow. The midwife's husbond's name of Newhowse is David Peregrinus, perhaps of the familie of Petrus Peregrinus, otherwise called Peter of ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... into the world before morning. It seemed almost miraculous to every one that no one had noticed the probability of it before. The astounded doctor's wife decided to move Katerina while there was still time to an establishment in the town kept by a midwife for such emergencies. As she set great store by her servant, she promptly carried out this plan and remained there looking after her. By the morning all Madame Krassotkin's friendly sympathy and energy were called upon to ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Rue de Marbeuf he read on a board in big letters: "Private Lying-in-Hospital, kept by Madame Alessandri, first-class midwife, ex-pupil of the Maternity, author of various works, etc." Then, in the centre of the street, over the door—a little side-door—there was another signboard: "Private Hospital of Madame Alessandri," with all ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... in the church. Nothing could be heard but the metallic click of the censer and slow singing.... Near Andrey Andreyitch stood the verger Matvey, the midwife Makaryevna, and her one-armed son Mitka. There was no one else. The sacristan sang badly in an unpleasant, hollow bass, but the tune and the words were so mournful that the shopkeeper little by little lost the expression of dignity and was plunged in sadness. He thought of his ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... child, and nervous because of her condition and fearful of the birth, would keep out the outcast; old Parry Cam; John Gilla Carr; Colum Johnston and Father John; Nabla herself; and Kate Kinsella the midwife—each is himself or herself, each remains as distinct in your mind the unforgettable scenes of the play. Somehow or other, too, the country is suggested; you are aware that you are on a wild hillside above a glen,—you are aware of this not ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... my fortune to be born of a German princess; but a man-midwife, pulling my head off in delivering my mother, put a speedy end to my ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding |
