d Difficult Labours and how the Midwife is
to proceed therein._

There are three sorts of bad labours, all painful and difficult, but not
all properly unnatural. It will be necessary, therefore, to distinguish
these.

The _first_ of these labours is that when the mother and child suffer
very much extreme pain and difficulty, even though the child come right;
and this is distinguishably called the laborious labour.

The _second_ is that which is difficult and differs not much from the
former, except that, besides those extraordinary pains, it is generally
attended with some unhappy accident, which, by retarding the birth,
causes the difficulty; but these difficulties being removed, it
accelerates the birth, and hastens the delivery.

Some have asked, what is the reason that women bring forth their
children with so much pain? I answer, the sense of feeling is
distributed to the whole body by the nerves, and the mouth of the womb
being so narrow, that it must of necessity be dilated at the time of the
woman's delivery, the dilating thereof stretches the nerves, and from
thence comes the pain. And therefore the reason why some women have more
pain in their labour than others, proceeds from their having the mouth
of the matrix more full of nerves than others. The best way to remove
those difficulties that occasion hard pains and labour, is to show first
from whence they proceed. Now the difficulty of labour proceeds either
from the mother, or child, or both.

From the mother, by reason of the indisposition of the body, or from
some particular part only, and chiefly the womb, as when the woman is
weak, and the mother is not active to expel the burden, or from
weakness, or disease, or want of spirits; or it may be from strong
passion of the mind with which she was once possessed; she may also be
too young, and so may have the passage too narrow; or too old, and then,
if it be her first child, because her pains are too dry and hard, and
cannot be easily dilated, as happens also to them which are too lean;
likewise those who are small, short or deformed, as crooked women who
have not breath enough to help their pains, and to bear them down,
persons that are crooked having sometimes the bones of the passage not
well shaped. The colic also hinders labour, by preventing the true
pains; and all great and active pains, as when the woman is taken with a
great and violent fever, a great flooding, frequent convulsions, bloody