This beautiful and effective plate shows the natural position of the child at the time of birth. It is technically called the presentment of the fœtus for birth. Of the presentment's there are many varieties, whose study is most interesting to the obstetrician. Some of them give rise to very difficult and dangerous delivery. When the presentment is natural, as in the figure, the comfort of the mother is increased and the doctor's anxiety is modulated.
First off, the plate that this section refers to is located in our section on chart 2. Here is the specific picture in question.
Second,that lasthave sense that talks about the anxiety of the doctor, I think that could be misconstrued a couple different ways. It could appear that the author is more worried about the doctor than the mother. That was my initial interpretation.
It could also be, that the author was trying to tell the reader, that it's okay to be anxious or you should be anxious if the fetus is not in the ideal position at childbirth.This could be some sort of hidden warning.It could also be something to tell doctors to relax if things are lined up correctly.
At this time, most babies were delivered at home.If a doctor was present, that was actually something.There really wasn't a great deal that they could do though if things went seriously wrong.
In our modern era we are so used to having medical professionals on hand to cover every little thing from corrective eye surgery to a nose job and we don't think about these things. Furthermore, medical services of the specialized nature are becoming close in common. If I need to find a charlotte cosmetic dentist to fix my smile, I can drive 20 miles down the road and find one.
Back then, you are doing good field drive a buggy 20 miles down the road to find a general practice doctor.
Additional Articles from the Book of Medicine:
- Bones of the Trunk and Arms. Different Forms of Bones
On turning over this flap we are brought face to face with a grim looking but useful object — the framework of the trunk and arms. The skeleton is of a ghastly appearance and emblematic of death; it’s unsightly look sends a thrill of poor through us, and we instinctively recoil from it. Yet at some serves a useful purpose in the human body, and the ugly looking bones, when carefully examined, abound in nice contrivances and ingenious workmanship; whilst each individual bonus design for the a special duty it has to perform. Hence the bones different forms; some are long, as in the arms and legs; some are short and thick, giving strength and compactness, as in the lumbar portion of the spine; some are flat, for covering a cavity, as the school and pelvis, and others used for special purpose or irregular, is in the hands and feet.
just when I thought the book was getting a slightly bit dull, this little section popped out at me as we start to read into some of the peculiar notions the author had regarding the skeletal system. Various phrases such as “thrill of poor” and “ghastly appearance and emblematic of death” rapidly depart from the tone you would expect from a medical journal or book. The author goes halfway through the paragraph before they start to get down to the actual topic at hand and shy away from their romantic notions about how scary a skeleton looks.
It makes me wonder just how much or how little your average person back in the early 1900s may have been exposed to views that included pictures of the skeleton. Back then there was no TV nor cartoons even to introduce children to the funny side of skeletons, there was no Halloween where children dressed up like skeletons. The skull and cross bones probably had a much more sinister visual impact on people and to see a skeleton in real life or even in a picture may have been more dramatic. It definitely seems peculiar here.
- Chart 2
Here are several images captured with a digital camera covering Chart 2.
- The Hand- Its Mechanism and Wonderful Endowments- Engraving of The Hand
The Hand; Its Mechanism and Wonderful Endowments.
Engraving of The Hand. – to tell one that this exquisite colored engraving represents a human hand seems almost like questioning his sanity. Yet such as; but how few there are who can give an intelligent account of the hand, describe its beautiful arrangements and complex mechanism, we’re told it’s wonderful endowments. Smaller compass, compact and structure, yet so skillfully arranged or its blood vessels and nerves, that they form a complete network over its surface so minute are they in their distribution that the point of the finest needle cannot penetrate any part of the hand without piercing quite a number of them. The hand is the great organ of touch and pretension in the instrument which distinguishes man in the large class of mammals, since he is the only animal which possesses to perfect and complete hands.
I just don’t think I have ever heard the human hand referred to before in health, science, anatomy or biology as a mechanism, like its a toilet or tankless water heaters or some elaborate dog feeding gizmo that you’d find in a mad scientists home in a bad Michael J Fox movie.
OK, so it wasn’t that bad!