he decision of their physician
to employ, or not to employ, any special form of anesthesia or
analgesia in their particular case. In order to give the reader a
complete understanding of "painless labor," it will be necessary to
give attention to that newer and more safe method of obstetric
anesthesia called "sunrise slumber." This method of anesthesia
consists in the employment of nitrous oxid or "laughing gas," and will
be fully considered in this chapter.

OBSTETRIC FEAR

In this connection we desire to reiterate and further emphasize some
statements made in the preceding chapter concerning the unnatural fear
and abnormal dread of childbirth.

We feel that it is very important in connection with this new movement
in obstetrics to reduce the woman's pain and suffering to the lowest
possible minimum, that the trials of labor should not be overdrawn and
the pangs of confinement overestimated. We must not educate the normal
woman to look upon labor as a terrible ordeal--something like a major
surgical operation--which, since it cannot be escaped, must be endured
with the aid of a deep anesthesia.

The facts are that a very small per cent of healthy women suffer any
considerable degree of severe pain--at least not after the first
child. We often observe that judicious mental suggestion on the part
of the physician or nurse in the form of encouraging words and
supporting assurances tends to exert a marked influence in controlling
nervousness and subduing the sufferings of the earlier labor pains.

We must not allow the efforts of medical science to lessen the
sufferings of child-bearing, to rob womankind of their natural and
commendable courage, endurance, and self-reliance.

We do not mean to perpetuate the old superstition that pain and
suffering are the necessary and inevitable accompaniments of
child-bearing--that the pangs of labor are a divine sentence
pronounced upon womankind--and that, therefore, nothing should be done
to lessen the sufferings of confinement. Severe and unnatural pain is
not at all necessary to childbirth, and there exists no reason under
the sun why women should suffer and endure it, any more than they
should suffer the horrors of a very painful surgical operation without
an anesthetic. In this connection, it should be recalled that
analgesic drugs have been introduced into obstetric practice only
during the last fifty years, while such methods of relieving pain have
been used in general