Researches in obstetrics / by J. Matthews Duncan.

  • Duncan, J. Matthews (James Matthews), 1826-1890.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Researches in obstetrics / by J. Matthews Duncan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    referred to show that pain, etc., is the cause of the mortality, the same statistics cannot show that the mere duration is the cause of it; and if they prove either of these two points, they cannot be fairly extended so as to demonstrate our first proposition. Dr. Collins justly objected to Dr. Simpson's uses of his data. The truth that was in them Collins rejected along with the error. A man of practical sagacity and immense experience, he at once repelled Dr. Simpson's erroneous conclusions, from the data in his Practical Treatise, in regard to the influence of pain and of length of labour upon maternal mortality. The inward testimony of his experience was so strong as to lead him instantly, and without analysing the statistical reasoning, to denounce these conclusions as visionary and extravagant. The truth of our first proposition he never grappled with. It had no apparent practical bearings; and therefore he refused to consider it. Dr. Collins might have gone a little further. It would have been quite a legitimate use of Sir J. Y. Simpson's argument, as to the influence of length of labour upon the maternal mortality, to turn it against the whole practice of anaesthesia in midwifery. For it is a very general belief that anaesthetics, by diminish- ing the force of the uterine contractions, increase the duration of labour, at least in many cases. Hence it follows, if Dr. Simpson is right in regard to the baneful influence of mere length of labour, that anaesthesia must tend to increase the maternal mor-