(2 of 5)
"An analgesic that is perfectly safe for both mother and child has not been discovered. The use of anything that deadens sensation distorts the natural process of childbirth and depresses the respiratory functions of the child. Certainly no woman will wish to be relieved of pain at the risk of harm to her baby.
''Where fear causes pain, there is no cure. Even the use-of drugs is ineffective. In childbirth, we are lucky because we have nine months in which to build up an understanding so that the mother-if properly instructed-will not have this fear. That is the modern physician's duty.
"The pains of childbirth have been grossly exaggerated in the minds of American women . . . by irresponsible allusions to the dangers of childbirth and by sensational magazine articles which have gone so far as to advocate Caesarean section as the only humane method of delivery."
Mention of magazine articles on maternity stirred A. M. A. obstetricians to angry outbursts. Indignantly recalled was the fact that U. S. mothers first heard of twilight sleep through the enterprise of McClwe's Magazine in June 1914.* Now running in Ladies' Home Journal is a series of blatantly emotional articles called "Why Should Mothers Die?" by Bacteriologist Paul de Kruif. Cried Kansas City's Dr. Buford Garvin Hamilton last week: "American obstetrics seems to be becoming a competitive practice to please American women in accordance with what they read in lay magazines."
At that, Chicago's honest Dr. Rudolph Wieser Holmes, 66, stood up to declare: "I was the man who first brought scopolamine to this country. I wish to God I hadn't done it! I didn't know what I was doing. I have seen hundreds of women die on the delivery table because of the wrongful use of drugs. The Utopia when physicians have a drug that is safe for both mother and child will come. But it will take a long time."
When the emotions of the obstetricians subsided for a moment, Chicago's Dr. Joseph Bolivar DeLee, generally rated the best obstetrician in the U. S., reverted to Dr. Nielsen's point that the pains of childbirth are largely psychological. Said sage Dr. DeLee, a bachelor who has brought some 8,000 into the world with his own hands and supervised the deliveries of 100,000 more: "It is not illogical to assume that the conditions of the mind affect the muscles active in childbirth. The best and safest aid to mothers will come when the obstetrician learns how to use suggestion. On occasion I have given a woman small doses of an innocuous substance, assuring her in doing so that the substance would put her to sleep. In such instances the woman actually did go to sleep, pure suggestion taking the place of drugs."