Identifier: laboramongprimit1882enge (find matches)
Title: Labor among primitive peoples. Showing the development of the obstetric science of to-day, from the natural and instinctive customs of all races, civilized and savage, past and present
Year: 1882 (1880s)
Authors: Engelmann, George J. (George Julius), 1847-1903
Subjects: Obstetrics Obstetrics
Publisher: St. Louis, J.H. Chambers & Co.
Contributing Library: Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine
Digitizing Sponsor: Open Knowledge Commons

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
however, are notconfined in their te-pee but in a temporary enclosure nearby. The accompanying cut represents a Comanche squawin labor, and in order that it may be fully understood I willgive some of the details of this accouchement from the ex-tremely interesting description of Major W. H. Forwood,Surgeon U. S. A., who was in attendance and kindly fur-nished the sketch : A short distance outside the camp,and in the rear of the patients family lodge, a shelter hadbeen constructed of green boughs, six or seven feet high,by making holes in the hard ground with a wooden peg, andsetting up brush or bushes, with the leaves on, around thecircumference of a circle about eight feet in diameter. An 1 Surgeon L. M. Maus, U. S. A., Fort Yates, D. T. 2 Dr. L. L. McCabe, Physician to the Kiowa, Comanche, and Wa-chita Agency; Maj. M. Barber, U. S. A. 3 34 LABOR: AN ETHNOLOGICAL STUDY. entrance was provided by breaking the circle and overlap-ping the two unjoined ends; in a line outside the entrance
Text Appearing After Image:
were three stakes, ten paces apart, set firmly upright in theground, four feet high. . Inside the shelter were two rectangular excavations in thegrass-covered soil, about twelve by sixteen inches, with a POSTURE. 35 Stake at one end of each ; in one of these holes was a hotstone, and in the other a little loose earth to receive anydischarge that might take place from the bladder or bowels ;the ground about was strewn with a few aromatic herbs ;sometimes a lariat secured to a limb overhead may take theplace of the stakes to hold to during a pain. I found my patient walking with her assistant, a femalerelative, up and down the line of stakes outside the shelter,stooping now and then to kneel at the nearest stake andgrasping it with both hands during a pain ; most of her timewas spent in this way, outside the enclosure ; occasionallyshe would enter to kneel over the hot stones or looseearth. During each pain she knelt down close to one ofthe stakes, bringing the front of her feet and leg

Note About Images