Page:Pearl of Asia (Child JT, 1892).pdf/334

306 regard to other days, months and years, which their astrological books show to be the most auspicious for the birth of children.

There are a thousand other superstitious observances connected with this subject, which tend greatly to enslave and dwarf the mind of the mother. Happy should all other mothers be that they have not been brought up under such chains of ignorance and consequent misery.

The superstitions surrounding childbirth are peculiar and cruel. Those who practice obstetrics are generally old women, a doctor is seldom called in except on rare occasions, and the midwives endeavor to aid natural labor by means of domestic medicines, shampooningshampooing [sic], etc, at times doing much serious mischief. The cruelest part of their procedure is immediately after childbirth, causing the mother to lie by a hot fire for a period of from five to thirty days. If it is the first child she is doomed to lie thirty days within four feet of a fire always uncomfortably warm, much of the time hot enough to blister, on a bare board without a mattress or the least thing to soften the hard plank. This must continue night and day, at the same time wearing nothing but a thin cotton cloth around her hips to shield her from the fire, and she is forced to keep turning constantly as the heat becomes too much for her to bear, in a climate where a fire is anything but pleasant to a person in good health, let alone an enfeebled woman, and this too in a small room without any chimney to carry off the smoke of the burning wood, so that the eyes of the patient are almost blinded as well as her body half baked. This is called "lying by the fire." The fire-place is a box about four feet