CHAP. XVIII. How to pull away the secundine or after-birth.
* 1.1I Suppose that they are called secundines, because they do give the woman that is with ch••lde the second time, as it were a second birth: for if there be several children in the womb at once, and of different sexes, they then have every one their several secundines, which thing is very necessary to be known by all Midwives. For they do many times remain behinde in the womb when the childe is born,* 1.2 either by reason of the weakness of the woman in travail, which by contending and labo••ing for the birth of the childe, hath spent all her strength: or else by a tumor rising suddenly in the neck of the womb, by reason of the long and difficult birth, and the cold air unadvisedly permitted to strike into the orifice of the womb. For so the liberties of the waies or passages are stopped and made more narrow, so that nothing can come forth: or else be∣cause they are doubled and folded in the womb, and the waters gon out from them with the in∣fant, so that they remain as it were in a d••ie place: or else because they yet stick in the womb by the knots of the veins and arteries, which commonly happeneth in those that are delivered before their time. For even as apples which are not ripe, cannot be pulled from the tree but by violence: but when they are ripe, they will fall off of their own accord: so the secundine before the natu∣ral time of the birth can hardly be pulled away but by violence; but at the prefixed natural time of the birth it may easily be drawn away.
* 1.3Many and grievous accidents follow the staying of the secundine; as suffocation of the womb, often swounding, by reason that gross v••po••s arise from the putrefaction unto the midriff, heart and brain, therefore they must be pulled away with speed from the womb, gently handling the navel, if it may be so possibly done But if it cannot be done so, the woman must be placed as she was wont when that the childe will not come forth naturally, but must be drawn forth by art. Therefore the midwife having her hand annointed with oil, must put it gently into the womb, and finding out the navel-string, must follow it until it come unto the secundine, and if it do as yet cleave to the womb by the Cotyledons, she must shake and move it gently up and down, that so when it is shaken and loosed, she may draw it out gently; but if it should be drawn with vio∣lence, it were to be feared lest that the womb should also follow: for by violent attraction some of the vessels, and also some of the nervous ligaments, whereby the womb is fastned on each s••de may be rent, whereof followeth corruption of blood shed out of the vessels, and thence commeth inflammation an abscess or a mortal gangrene.* 1.4 Neither is there less danger of a convulsion by rea∣son of the breaking of the nervous bodies, neither is there any less danger of the falling down of the womb. If that there be any knots or clods of blood remaining together with the secundine, the Midwife must draw them out one by one, so that not any may be left behinde.
* 1.5Some women have voided their secundine, when it could not be drawn forth by any means, long after the birth of the childe, by the neck of their womb, piece-meal, rotten and corrupted, with many grievous and painful accidents. Also it shall be very requisite to provoke the indeavor of the expulsive faculty by sternutatories, atomatick fomentations of the neck of the womb, by mollifying injections: and contrariwise, by applying such things to the nostrils as yield a rank sa∣vor or smell, with a potion made of mug-wort and bay-berries taken in hony and wire mixed together, or with half a dram of the powder of savin, or with the hair of a womans head, burnt and beaten to powder, and given to drinke; and to conclude, with all things that provoke the terms or courses.