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Why Women Live Longer-Childbirthby TortureWinner of the 137 Pulitzer Prize, David Dietz, Scripps-Howard Science Editor, has a nation-wideireputation as the foremost writer of popular articles on medicine. In this new series he discusses the amazing advances which, Twentieth Century medicine has made in dealing* with the problems of childbirth and the health of women in general.By DAVID DIETZ INTO the valley of the shadow of death goes each mother to * bring back her baby. She risks her own life to usher a new-life into the world. How she is permitted to make that journey, how the rest of the world regards it and makes provisions for it, is a test of the state of civilization. It brands the age, the nation, the community.In baz'baric times, the expectant*-----mother was treated with callous-n■ and indifference. When the process of birth failed to proceed smoothly brutal, inhuman methodsused towerehasten it. One proof of .the greatness of Egyptian, Greek and Roman cultures, is that in each an elabc/rate art for the care of the expectant mother arose. But with the collapse of Roman civiliza-_ tion, the old, sav-Bavifi iMetz age outlook returned to hold sway for 13 long centuries. Not until the Renaissance did the world begin to concern itself once more with, the problems of the child-bearing woman.Each great medical advance of the 18th, ISHh and 20th centuries has contributed to the welfare of the' expectant mother. Greatest among the achievements of the present day is its treatment of mother and child, a greater triumph for civilization than the tallest, building, the longest bridge, or the fastest ocean liner.The triumphs of modern medicine in this realm are doubly amazing when it is remembered that the progress of civilization has made childbirth a more difficult process. There are a number of reasons why the primitive woman had an easier time of it.To begin with, primitive women were stronger on the average than modern women. Primitive life exercised a ruthless weeding out process so that weakling did not survive long enough to reach the child-rS RARE BOUQUETT/MVAlKACtnbearing age. Secondly, the primitive woman, because of the active life she led, had a small baby. This made delivery easier. Moreover, her active life tended to’ shake her baby down into the head-down position which is the normal position for birth.Because of the restrictions of primitive society, there were no cross-breeding of races and so the woman was sure to have a baby of a size suited to the bony ring of herpelvis through which' it had to emerge into the world. This was no .longer true after the interbreeding of racial strains that came with the passage of the centuries.Finally, the primitive woman was more protected from the diseases which came with civilization. Having lived all her life in the open, she had received enough sunlight and so was unlikely to have pelvic bonesdeformed by rickets. At the time of the birth of her child, she did not have to worry about the infections which came with the crowded, filthy conditions of the Middle Ages and which still obtain in some unfortunate parts of the world.Thus it was that the Indian squaw, when her tribe was on the march, could stop off by the side of some stream, have her baby,' wash it in the flowing waters, and then hasten to join her wandering tribesmen.But it must not be thought that the primitive woman did not experience difficulties at times or that she: had no fear of childbirth. Her one great fear was that her child, instead of lying head down might lie transversely across the pelvis.This transverse position, which presents no very great difficulty the modern obstetrician, meant to the primitive woman that her baby could, not be born. It meant certain death for both her and her baby,Ii*1'YI(Child Was BiamedtI«*»cta*iictttII
Newspaper Details
El Paso Herald Post
El Paso, Texas, US
Mon, Sep 27, 1937
Page 10
Full Page
Clipped by
Raul M.
NA, 24 May 2022
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