CHAPTER III.
OBSTETRIC ANOMALIES.
General Considerations .-- In discussing obstetric anomalies we shall first consider those strange instances in which stages of parturition are unconscious and for some curious reason the pains of labor absent.
Some women are anatomically constituted in a manner favorable to child-birth, and pass through the experience in a comparatively easy manner; but to the great majority the throes of labor are anticipated with extreme dread, particularly by the victims of the present fashion of tight lacing.
It seems strange that a physiologic process like parturition should be attended by so much pain and difficulty.

Savages in their primitive and natural state seem to have difficulty in many cases, and even animals are not free from it.

We read of the ancient wild Irish women breaking the pubic bones of their female children shortly after birth, and by some means preventing union subsequently, in order that these might have less trouble in child-birth--as it were, a modified and early form of symphysiotomy.

In consequence of this custom the females of this race, to quote an old English authority, had a "waddling, lamish gesture in their going." These old writers said that for the same reason the women in some parts of Italy broke the coccyxes of their female children.

This report is very likely not veracious, because this bone spontaneously repairs itself so quickly and easily.