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I. Harvey Flack, "The Pre-History of Midwifery"

siiky

2023/11/03

whitepaper,science,medicine

https://doi.org/10.1177/003591574704001214

Abnormal births were due to demons and where the demons were exceptionally powerful the midwives might reluctantly be compelled to call in the shaman. The belief on which the shaman worked was quite simple and was shared by most primitive peoples. Labour was supposed to be a voluntary act on the part of the child which was anxious to escape from its confined quarters. If the child was slow then it would be coaxed by the promise of food. If that failed it was threatened with dire penalties. A logical advance from this point was to take the woman out into the open and get a horseman to appear to ride her down. The charging horse turned aside at the last moment but the whole manceuvre which was popular among the American Indians was intended to frighten the child and make it hurry up its own delivery. If that failed then the woman would be laid on her back so that her swollen abdomen might be jumped on, or she might be suspended from a tree while the enthusiastic midwives pulled down heavily on a strap round her abdomen and the shaman cheered them on.

Sounds like fun.

The duration of pregnancy was known and in the seventeenth century B.C. Westcar papyrus instructions are given for calculating the expected date of delivery. It must be realized that to relate intercourse with pregnancy and determine the duration of pregnancy was a big step forward. Many primitive peoples know of no such relation. The Ingarda tribe in Australia believe that the child is a product of some food the mother has eaten. The Buduna tribe firmly believed that their women bore half-caste children because the white settlers had introduced bread made of white flour instead of the dark native bread. The women ate the white bread and therefore they had half-white children. Malinowski (1929) describes how the Trobriand islanders believe that pregnancy follows rupture of the hymen by whatever means and that intercourse is intended purely for pleasure and has nothing to do with procreation. Fatherhood is a social rather than a biological concept with most primitive groups. Other tribes believe that someone other than the socjally recognized "father" sends an invisible spirit-baby to enter the woman. The sender in some tribes is called the child's Wororu and while the Wororu is often the father's brother it may even be his sister or some other female relative who wishes the spirit-baby on to his "wife".

Very interesting.

§ Sex at Dawn

Drinking water which has been used to wash a dead person is equally effective [at preventing pregnancy].

Whoa!

Twenty-four diseases of the female organs of generation are described very sketchily. Typical examples quoted by McKay (1901) are:

(...)

Palani: when a large man has connexion with a small and young female, he injures the parts and produces this disease.

lol wtf

When manipulation failed and the presentation was "irremediable" the doctor must resort to the knife. The skull was to be cut first and removed piecemeal, then the child's body could be extracted with a special pair of forceps. If this was not possible the head should be cut off and delivered in one piece by grasping the eye-sockets or the mouth. If the shoulders were stuck fast in the birth passage the child's arms must be cut off. These directions in the Sushruta are detailed and provide for every possible contingency.

Hardcore.