[ExI] Subject: Re: Human extinction

[Harvey Newstrom]

>> If you insist on quoting literature, then I suggest to go back much
>> further in time, a couple of thousand of years, and see if the Greeks or
>> other (say, nature-oriented) cultures write about women suffering in
>> giving birth. Neither Hippocrates, nor Aristotle, nor Soranus nor other
>> supposedly learned men of the Grecian School of Medicine wrote of pain
>> in their notes on normal, uncomplicated birth, for example.

This is simply untrue.  A quick Google search found many examples in the 
writings of Hippocrates and Aristotle that seem to indicate that birth pains 
are common place.

I Googled "Hippocrates child birth pain" and got this on my first hit:
Middleberg, Maurice. 
_Promoting_Reporductive_Security_in_Developing_Countries_.  p.3.
<http://books.google.com/books?id=8LR7GSmNGUsC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=Hippocrates+child+birth+pain&source=web&ots=cuQppdbycn&sig=CGVj6JfumdSy1gYftczR6D3eyWo&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result>
"Hippocrates and Aristotle advocated breathing exercises to relieve 
[birthing] pain."

This was my second hit:
Lloyd, G.E.R., ed.  Hippocratic Writings. p. ix.
<http://homepages.gac.edu/~ecarlson/Women/Hippocrates.htm>
"Thirty-two percent of the patients portrayed in the book Epidemics are 
women, and one third of them had problems in pregnancy or childbirth.  The 
abundance of maternal death accounts can lead to the assumption that 
maternal death was common enough to spark Hippocrates's medical knowledge 
interests.  Furthermore, he Hippocrates also must have closely watched and 
documented these women.  He documented their behavior, their excrements, 
fevers, delirium, sleeping patterns, pains, and any symptoms not experienced 
in everyday life."

My third hit was this:
Overview of Hippocratic Epidemics
<http://www.indiana.edu/~ancmed/epidemics.htm>
V, 25  in which a woman, barren all her life, at the age of 60 suffered 
labor-like pains after eating raw leaks.
(This seems to reference labor-like pains as a normal symptom of labor, and 
seemed to expect readers to recognize what labor pains were.)

I Googled "Aristotle child birth pain" and got all of these in my first hit:
Aristotle.  The History of Animals.
<http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.7.vii.html>
"And labour in the case of female children is apt to be protracted and 
sluggish, while in the case of male children it is acute and by a long way 
more difficult. Women who have connexion with their husbands shortly before 
childbirth are delivered all the more quickly. Occasionally women seem to be 
in the pains of labour though labour has not in fact commenced, what seemed 
like the commencement of labour being really the result of the foetus 
turning its head. "

"Moreover, some women suffer most at the beginning of their pregnancy and 
some at a later period when the embryo has had time to grow; and in some 
women it is a common occurrence to suffer from strangury towards the end of 
their time. As a general rule women who are pregnant of a male child escape 
comparatively easily and retain a comparatively healthy look, but it is 
otherwise with those whose infant is a female; for these latter look as a 
rule paler and suffer more pain, and in many cases they are subject to 
swellings of the legs and eruptions on the body."

"Women suffer most pain about the fourth and the eighth months, and if the 
foetus perishes in the fourth or in the eighth month the mother also 
succumbs as a general rule; so that not only do the eight-months' children 
not live, but when they die their mothers are in great danger of their own 
lives."

"When women are in labour, their pains determine towards many divers parts 
of the body, and in most cases to one or other of the thighs. Those are the 
quickest to be delivered who experience severe pains in the region of the 
belly; and parturition is difficult in those who begin by suffering pain in 
the loins, and speedy when the pain is abdominal."

"In other animals parturition is unaccompanied by pain, and the dam is 
plainly seen to suffer but moderate inconvenience. In women, however, the 
pains are more severe, and this is especially the case in persons of 
sedentary habits, and in those who are weak-chested and short of breath. 
Labour is apt to be especially difficult if during the process the woman 
while exerting force with her breath fails to hold it in. "

--
Harvey Newstrom <www.HarveyNewstrom.com>
CISSP CISA CISM CIFI GSEC IAM ISSAP ISSMP ISSPCS IBMCP