What recommendations were given to women in labor in ancient times, and is it worth listening to them today

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Some of the common medical practices of the past nowadays, when you read about them, are dumbfounded. For example, how they looked after pregnant women and delivered. It seems savage, and nothing more. But upon closer inspection, it turns out that midwives sometimes offered the best that could be imagined without twentieth-century medicine.

Give birth without fail in the dark or in the bath

For many peoples, a woman had to hide for childbirth somewhere, where it is dark, so that evil spirits would not see her and the child. Some of the peoples that knew the bath also suggested giving birth in it, only for other reasons - for example, in Russia it was believed that a woman in labor was unclean, therefore she should give birth in an unclean room. The Aztecs, whose woman also gave birth in a bath, may have believed the same.

Isn't it easier for a midwife to see the front of work in good lighting, and for a woman to lie on a comfortable bed, they ask themselves a question in our time. In fact, it is not very physiological for a woman to give birth while lying on her back. Perhaps reclining, with a lot of pillows under the back and strongly pulling and bending his legs. Squatting or frog pose is also suitable. Since, in this case, the front of the midwife's work is still not particularly visible, bright lighting does not have a strong meaning, and the bed becomes unnecessary - all these poses can be taken in a bathhouse or another place chosen for childbirth.

Moreover, in the bath there is an opportunity to maintain a temperature at which a woman's tissues will be soft and elastic, as well as the ability to immediately wash off all impurities from both the woman and the child. In a hot bath, the likelihood of accidental infection in the reproductive organs is also reduced - the bacteria simply die. There was no other way to make the room almost sterile at that time.

As for the dark place to which the mother in childbirth retired in other cultures, in the absence of a bath, there can be many explanations. Firstly, any small secluded place is likely to be dark - and in a secluded place it is more convenient to give birth to a child, otherwise they will torture you with advice. After all, traditionally people live rather crowded, everyone is in full view of each other and comments on everything. Secondly, the eyes of a woman in labor suffer from tension during childbirth, the light can cut them corny, increasing the discomfort that already exists during childbirth. And as for spirits, the explanation was used in general in any understandable and incomprehensible circumstances - especially since in many nations men did not care about the comfort of women and the arguments about the desire for privacy and pain in the eyes simply would not understand.

Praying during childbirth

Among the ancient Egyptians, a woman who did not have a separate room in her house in order to give birth there quietly went to give birth in a special room at the temple, where well-trained midwives served her free of charge. They accompanied the birth process, in all likelihood, with choral prayers and incense. All this seems too distracting for a woman from childbirth: to prayers? Nevertheless, among many peoples, despite the fact that women did not give birth at churches and often no one burned any incense in the process, the helpers either muttered prayers in chorus, or sang sacred songs, or the woman in childbirth herself was encouraged to pray in a circle. It would seem that people have nothing to do!

In fact, incense helped to achieve a double goal - it drove away insects, which during childbirth in hot countries become a real disaster, and intoxicated the woman in labor. Collective prayers, or at least a prayer in a circle, also helped to fall into a kind of trance. Since childbirth is not an easy process, throughout the history of mankind, women have been looking for ways to make it less painful. Dizziness from incense (especially incense) and half-trance from songs and prayers helped to achieve these goals. And some peoples directly used herbal pain relievers. True, in Europe this practice was stopped during the struggle between doctors and midwives for fees. Midwives began to be declared accomplices of the devil and witches, and those who escaped the fire were afraid to use decoctions that might be considered potions.

Lie a month before, lie a month after

If ordinary women found a dark place only during childbirth, then the noble ladies of the European Middle Ages, with which they consulted, were recommended to spend about a month before and after childbirth in a dark, unventilated room, surrounded by women who are ready to read to the future or held woman in childbirth. Bible or sing psalms.

In principle, it is already clear why women sang psalms (especially during childbirth), but to lock a pregnant woman in a stuffy room and then give birth to a woman without moving seems almost mockery. It is necessary, however, to understand some of the realities of that time. Firstly, to be in a room with women (by the way, these were usually rather spacious rooms with a draft on the floor) meant falling out of the common, and in those days it meant - male space, in some way to retire, but in such a way as to get a guarantee that a man will not break the privacy by secretly sneaking into the room of a lonely woman.

Quite unconventional attacks on women, even of the upper classes, were very common, from which - especially if the attacker was a husband - the woman was practically unprotected. Morals were rude, and no wonder. This was partly due to the fact that almost the main drink of the men of the nobility was wine, consumed from morning to evening. The crowd of women discouraged the potential rapist and gave the pregnant woman a sense of peace.

It's easy to assume that a poorly ventilated room, even a very large one, smelled bad. But in cities that were already crowded in the Middle Ages, the smell was no better from the street, and hordes of flies flew in with it, feeding off food for a pregnant woman with the risk of adding some kind of infection to the food. The doctors of the Middle Ages, relying on experience, chose the lesser evil. As for the boredom that overcame the ladies locked up, the Bible, especially the Old Testament, had enough exciting stories of love and betrayal to entertain themselves. In this respect, reading was a good substitute for cinema that had not yet been invented.

There was a sense in nursing after childbirth. Before childbirth, the tissues of a woman, in order to become more elastic, soften quite a lot. Taking into account the fact that a woman who was walking on her legs was expected to wear a corset, which shifted the internal organs and, as a result, increased the load on the pelvis, the best prevention of displacement of organs in the pelvis and even the pelvic bones was to stay in bed until the tissues came into their own. normal condition. Fortunately, the beds at that time were wide; a small crowd of friends or girlfriends often gathered in them to chat and play board games.

In the old days, not only midwives were declared witches. 7 famous women who were hailed as witches: Jeanne d'Arc, Matilda Kshesinskaya and others.