The workes of that famous chirurgion Ambrose Parey translated out of Latine and compared with the French. by Th: Johnson

CHAP. XIII. With what travell the Childe is brought into the world, and of the cause of this labour and travell.

WHen the naturall prefixed and prescribed time of child-birth is come, the childe being then growne greater, requires a greater quantity of food: which when he cannot receive in sufficient measure by his navell, with great labour and striving hee endeavoureth to get forth: therefore then free is moved with a stronger violence, and doth breake the membranes wherein he is contained. Then the wombe, because it is not able to endure such vio∣lent motions, nor to sustaine or hold up the childe any longer, by reason that the conceptacles of the membranes are broken asunder, is relaxed. And then the childe * 1.1 pursuing the aire which hee feeleth to enter in at the mouth of the wombe, which then is very wide and gaping, is carried with his head downewards, and so com∣meth into the world, with great pain both unto it selfe, and also unto his mother, by reason of the tenderness of his body, & also by reason of the extension of the nervous necke o•…•… mothers wombe, and separation of the bone called Os Ilium from the bone cal•…•… Os sacrum. For unlesse those bones were drawne in sunder, how could * 1.2 not onely twinnes that cleave fast together, but also one childe alone, come forth at so narrow a passage as the necke of the wombe is? Not onely reason, but also expe∣rience confirmeth it; for I have opened the bodies of women presently after they

have died of travell in childe-birth, in whom I have found the bones of Ilium to bee drawne the breadth of ones finger from Os sacrum: and moreover, in many unto whom I have been called being in great extremity of difficult and hard travell, I have not onely heard, but also felt the bones to crackle and make a noise, when I laid my hand upon the coccyx or rumpe, by the violence of the distention. Also honest ma∣trons have declared unto me that they themselves, a few daies before the birth, have felt and heard the noise of those bones separating themselves one from another with great paine. Also a long time after the birth, many doe feele great paine and ache about the region of the coccix and Os sacrum, so that when nature is not able to re∣paire the dissolved continuity of the bones of Ilium, they are constrained to halt all the dayes of their life after. But the bones of the share called Ossa pubis, I have never seene to be separated, as many do also affirme. It is reported that in Italy they break * 1.3 the coccyx or rumpe in all maidens, that when they come to bee married they may beare children with the lesser travaile in childe-birth; but this is a forged tale, for that bone being broken, is naturally and of its owne accord repaired, and joyned to∣gether again with a Callus, whereby the birth of the childe will be more difficult and hard.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Why the infant is borne some∣times with his head forwards.
• * 1.2

  In the time of childe birth the bones of Ilium and Os sacrum are drawne & extended one from another.
• * 1.3

  An Italian fa∣ble.