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But even now obstetricians are well aware that the practical mechanical problem for the civilized woman is much more serious than for her savage sister; and the argument that civilized women would discharge maternal functions as well as savage women if they worked as hard is therefore worthless. Let us return now to the question of nursing capacity.
The majority of obstetricians adhere to the traditional ten days; but there are advocates of a longer period and advocates of a shorter one. The generalizations of many writers upon this subject are too sweeping, for exceptions may be found to any rule.
We have said that the opinion of obstetricians is that the modern woman has more difficulty in delivering herself than did her ancestress. First, women marry later than they did. It may be said that the first child is easiest born before the mother is twenty-five years of age, and that from that time on a first child is born with rapidly increasing difficulty.
Some physicians favor what is known as the English position, in which the patient lies on her left side with her face inclined toward the chest, the trunk bent toward the knees, and the legs drawn up toward the abdomen. The majority of obstetricians, however, prefer that the patient should lie flat on her back.
Is the modern woman more susceptible to the effects of pregnancy, less resistant to the strain of childbearing and childbirth? It is a quite general impression amongst obstetricians that this is a fact and also that fewer women are able to nurse their babies. If so, these phenomena are of the highest importance to the race and likewise to the problem of the new housewife.
It is for this reason that many obstetricians object to the time- honored custom of applying a tight bandage about the abdomen at the conclusion of labor; for, though bandaging is not always harmful, it has a distinct tendency to misplace the womb.
Matthews Duncan, one of Edinburgh's many famous obstetricians, who found that the mortality rate in childbirth, or as a consequence of it, was lowest among women from twenty to twenty-four years of age.
Persons from New York and other parts of the Middlewest have been known to believe that Brooklyn is somehow humorous. In newspaper jokes and vaudeville it is so presented that people who are willing to take their philosophy from those sources believe that the leading citizens of Brooklyn are all deacons, undertakers, and obstetricians.
In this connection I may state that the leading obstetricians believe that the woman of to-day has a harder time in labor than her predecessors.
During recent years, nevertheless, there has been an increasingly strong tendency among obstetricians to speak decisively concerning intercourse during pregnancy, either by condemning it altogether or by enjoining great prudence.
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