CHAPTER I

SUGGESTION IN OBSTETRICS

In no department of medicine is favorable or unfavorable mental influence more important than in obstetrics. Unfortunately, unfavorable suggestion has here played a serious role and must be controlled, modified, neutralized. Suggestion is valuable in its every phase, during the course of pregnancy, in labor itself, in _post-partum_ convalescence, and with regard to nursing. Many women in our time are prone to persuade themselves that labor is a more serious incident than it usually proves to be and the consequence is an unfortunate suggestion of pain to come that so exaggerates sensitiveness as to make the actual suffering seem more than it really is. Sympathy expressed for women in pregnancy and in anticipation of their labor is sure to do more harm than good. Pain instead of being lessened by sympathy is increased and capacity to bear it is diminished. Anything that calls attention more particularly to the pain removes distracting conditions that might modify it favorably. Animals have the admirable instinct of withdrawing to some quiet corner when they are in pain, preferring to be alone. In this they follow nature and imitation of them is worthy of consideration, at least so far as the avoidance of opportunities for the expression of sympathy is concerned.

PREGNANCY

Maintenance of Health.--Women must keep up their normal health and strength during pregnancy. By not taking sufficient exercise and by being too much indoors, many women develop a morbid mental state in which every discomfort is less bearable than it was before. Lack of air and of exercise, furthermore, makes them prone to constipation, makes their sleep less restful, and reduces the appetite. For the sake of the being within them, they force themselves to eat, but this often serves only to make them obese, without improving their general health. If a woman in her ordinary condition, who was accustomed to going out-of-doors several hours every day and having reasonable diversion of mind and exercise of body, were to adopt the habits of life that many pregnant women form, she, too, would become morbidly introspective, fearful of the future, irritable over little things, restless at night, and even have certain physical symptoms, such as constipation, tired feelings, loss of {454} appetite, etc. Many of the discomforts and symptoms of which women complain during pregnancy are really due to unfortunate habits and to their mental attitude toward their conditions, rather than to any specific influence of pregnancy on the general health. As a rule, women who live naturally are in somewhat better physical health during pregnancy that at other times.

Obesity and Pregnancy.--It is important that women should not become obese during pregnancy. The woman who is taking too much fat in her diet and accumulating fat is likely to have a fat baby, and with these there is more difficulty in labor itself, and the infants have less resistive vitality than if they were unencumbered with useless adipose tissue. Her will must overcome the tendency to lassitude and the proneness to inactivity that comes over her, and she must feel that labor and her condition after it are dependent on normal, healthy life at this time.

Delayed Labor and Suggestion.--One phase of maternal impressions or of suggestion for the mother's mind that I have always been interested in has been that of the possibility of preventing delay in parturition by frequent suggestion of the time that delivery should be expected. There seems to be no doubt that expectation has some influence on the time of delivery. We do not know just why, after the uterus has tolerated the presence of the fetus for nine calendar months, it should then refuse to do so any longer and contract and expel it. Any number of theories have been suggested and even now our best obstetricians are not agreed as to the reason for this action on the part of the uterus. In some cases this contraction does not take place normally. The due term of labor is past and as a consequence fetuses grow too large within the uterus, greatly increasing the difficulties of parturition and adding to the risk of both mother and child. It is the custom to announce with pride the birth of twelve- and fifteen-pound babies, but it is doubtful whether nature intended that growth to this extent should take place before birth. There is in this, as in other phases of pride with regard to children, a curiously perverted feeling.

Many obstetricians feel that the babies who weigh much more than the average of seven pounds have probably been delayed in the uterus for a lunar month beyond the time when they should, or at least could have been normally born. It is a question whether this delay would have occurred if the mother's expectation of the birth had been directed to a date a month ahead of that on which her mind became fixed as the time of labor. Parturition usually takes place about the period of the recurrence of the menstrual molimina, or at least of that monthly cyclic feeling which many women experience, though there is no flow. It is not always easy to say at which of two monthly periods the birth should be expected. While physicians have warned patients of the possibility of the child being born at the first of the two possible periods, they have been inclined to dwell on the fact that it will probably be delayed until the later term. Women themselves are more prone to take the later than the earlier termination of their pregnancy. Both physician and patient are timorous of the ridicule that may follow if they make premature announcements. Whether we have not in this way created a tradition tending to delay parturition by a lunar month in many cases, is a problem that requires careful study.

The suggestion of as early a period as is compatible with the data provided, so as to create a definite expectancy in the mother's mind, seems well worth {455} deliberate attention. This is a role that psychotherapy has to play in lessening the dangers and the difficulties of parturition. With most healthy women, as indeed with most sensible normal women in life as regards all things, no suggestion is needed and nature will take her course promptly and properly. It is the nervous women, over-anxious about themselves, often of lax physical fiber because of their nervous condition, that need this phase of psychotherapy. It is in them that the unfavorable or mistaken suggestion may be emphasized to such a degree as to delay labor for a lunar month or even more.

Vomiting of Pregnancy.--One of the dreaded complications of pregnancy is serious prolonged vomiting. We know now that this is of two kinds, toxic and neurotic. The toxic variety may be associated with kidney changes, but is more commonly the consequence of certain rare forms of degeneration of the liver. The pathological picture after death is not unlike that of phosphorus poisoning. These cases are due to some serious disturbance of metabolism or to the absorption of some little understood poison. They are probably always fatal. The cases of neurotic vomiting are rather common. They are exaggerations, of the ordinary familiar vomiting of pregnancy which is exhibited by nearly all women at the recurrence of the menstrual times in the early portion of pregnancy. In some of these cases, however, the vomiting is so persistent and so prolonged that the patient's nutrition suffers severely, and there seems to be danger of a fatal termination. The condition has received the unfortunate name of "pernicious vomiting." In these cases there is sometimes question of the advisability of terminating the pregnancy lest the woman should die. Unfortunately this question has been so commonly discussed that most prospective mothers are likely to know something about it, so that when vomiting begins they are fearful lest they should have to lose their child. This becomes an obsession in some minds and an unfavorable suggestion that helps to maintain the vomiting.

A number of remedies have been highly recommended for this at various times. Nearly every alterative drug has had its period of popularity. In the older time nitrate of silver was said to be efficacious. Small doses of ipecac were highly recommended at one time. Small doses of cocain were suggested, and the painting of the back of the throat with cocain. Small doses of morphin had a vogue; codein had its turn after its introduction, and heroin also had a time of popularity. Oxalate of cerium was highly recommended. Any obstetrician of experience will remember many other remedies that have been supposed to be efficacious. Various gynecological procedures have been suggested: the touching of the _cervix uteri_ with a mild caustic, with iodin or with nitrate of silver, slight dilatation of the cervix, sometimes the application of a tampon with just enough glycerin to produce a reaction, but not enough to terminate the pregnancy. Occasionally local applications over the stomach region, a mustard leaf, or certain plasters, or finally even a piece of sized paper bound on over this region have been known to be followed by the cessation of the vomiting. When as many different remedies are recommended and seem for a time to be successful and then later prove to be inefficacious, it is reasonably clear that it is not the remedies but the effect produced by these on the mind that is the important therapeutic factor.

Many obstetricians of wide experience now teach that most of these cases of vomiting in pregnancy are merely neurotic and are to be treated entirely {456} as if they were hysterical. The patient's mind is to be distracted from her condition; she is to be assured that even severe vomiting is quite common in pregnancy, that it is annoying, but never serious in its consequences, that it always ends without unfortunate incident for mother or child, and that there need be no solicitude. Above all, no hint of the possibility of the necessity for the termination of the pregnancy, if vomiting continues, should be given. Some physicians are entirely too solicitous in the matter and have by their anxiety made the neurotic condition of their patients worse. Some men see what they call a "pernicious vomiting" in every hundred labors. A well-known obstetrician in New York has had 3,000 births without seeing a single case. He is known for his placidity and lack of over-anxiety. In the great obstetrical clinics in Europe vomiting to the extent that will put mother or child in danger is extremely rare. The greatest obstetrician of the later nineteenth century reports 100,000 obstetrical cases with only one artificial labor.

In foreign obstetrical clinics these cases in recent years have been treated expectantly, without any active interference, especially with pregnancy, and the results have been much more satisfactory than any other method of treatment. There are a number of cases on record now in which pregnant women have lost from twenty to forty pounds as the result of vomiting for weeks, yet after a time the attack has passed and they have carried the child to full term. Where vomiting has occurred and relief has once been afforded by the termination of pregnancy, it is very unlikely that succeeding pregnancies will pass without corresponding conditions in which no remedy will prove effective, except the dreaded obstetrical intervention for the termination of the pregnancy. It is extremely important then that these cases should be treated conservatively and that from the very beginning there should be nothing to arouse the patient's solicitude with regard to herself or above all to give her any hint of the possibility of obstetrical intervention being necessary in her case. For some women the knowledge that a consultation has been held to discuss such a possibility will of itself prove a persistent unfavorable suggestion, that will surely prolong the vomiting.

This may seem a rather strong opinion from one who is not in practical touch with obstetrics. It has been the growing opinion, however, among the great German obstetricians for the last generation. Ahlfeld, in the _Archiv fuer Gynaekologie_ (Band 18 Heft 2 page 310) said that he had seen [in a very large obstetrical practice] three cases of so-called pernicious vomiting (_unstillbaren Erbrechen_) in all of which the patients wanted an abortion because they had previously learned the success of this method of treatment, but all of them recovered without incident and carried their children to term. Kronig, ten years ago, in his monograph on "The Significance of Functional Nervous Diseases for Diagnosis and Treatment in Gynaecology" [Footnote 36] said: "The excessive vomiting of pregnant patients has for a long time seemed to be a genital reflex neurosis. We thought that the growing uterus irritates certain nerve tracts which are connected with the mucous membrane of the stomach. We owe it to Kaltenbach that this opinion was overturned and _hyperemesis gravidarum_ set down as the result of a functional neurosis, hysterical in character. A large number of gynaecologists have accepted this opinion in recent {457} years (men of all nations) among others Calderini, Charpentier, Schaeffer, Klein, and Graefe."

[Footnote 36: Ueber die Bedeutung der Funktionellen Nervenkrankhelten fuer die Diagnostik und Therapie in der Gynakologie von Dr. B. Kronig. Leipzig, 1902.]

Winkel and the leading obstetricians of Germany, especially the directors of obstetrical clinics in the large cities, must be quoted as of the same opinion, since Winkel has collected the statistics of 100,000 pregnancies in the large German clinics in which 6,555 obstetrical operations were performed and in only one case was artificial abortion produced. German opinion is rather strong in the assertion that a number of cases of abortion in the practice of an obstetrician indicates over-hastiness in coming to conclusions as to danger, or leaves him open to the suspicion of yielding too readily to the wishes of mothers who would prefer not to carry their children to term. The suggestion of the possible necessity for abortion has done much to make the hysterical vomiting of these patients continue until this remedy is employed. Insistence from the very beginning that vomiting, though it may injure both mother and child, never necessitates abortion--one out of 100,000 cases is practically never--would be the best possible contrasuggestion.

Kronig thinks that the vomiting of pregnancy is an especially favorable subject for suggestive treatment. He inclines to the opinion that the remedies that have been reported to do good and so many of which have subsequently proved unavailing have really owed whatever success they have had to the suggestion that went with them. Bumm, in his text-book of obstetrics (Grundriss zum Studium der Geburtshuelfe von Dr. Ernst Bumm, Wiesbaden, 1902), accepts Kaltenbach's and Ahfeld's conclusions and thinks that the consideration of _hyperemesis_ as an hysterical neurosis is well supported by the success and failure of our therapeutics. All sorts of remedies, any number of drugs, all manner of gynecological procedures short of abortion, though also including abortion, have been reported as doing good. All of them even including abortion have failed in a certain number of cases. Evidently suggestion plays a large role. Hypnosis often proves an excellent remedy.

Excessive Salivary Secretion.--Bumm considers that the excess of secretion of saliva which is so often noticed in pregnancy is of the same nature and should be treated rather by suggestion than by any particular remedy, though remedies should be tried because of certain helpful physical effects, and then the psychic element that goes with them. The less importance given to the symptom, the less attention it attracts, the more its passing trivial character is emphasized, the sooner it will subside. Solicitude causes it to persist and even increase.

LABOR

Suggestion in Labor.--When the subjects are normal, expectancy has much to do with the severity of labor pains. In recent years so much fuss has been made and so much said and written about woman's burden and travail in the pains of childbirth, that preliminary dread and anxious attention have wrought young women up to such a poignancy of expectation as to make these pains worse than they really are. In the old days child-bearing was as much a matter of course as the husband going out to his daily work, and the taking of the dangers and fatigues of it was a simple matter of duty. Labor was then {458} comparatively easy and, while never pleasant, was also never an over-uncomfortable process. The effect of unfortunate suggestion has been to make it seem ever so much worse than it really is. Multiparae furnish the best proof of this. A healthy woman who has already had more than one child does not dread labor pains very much, or only to a slight degree, because the previous maternities have lessened the physical pain to be experienced, though a healthy woman's tissues are so thoroughly resilient that nature is able to bring about a return to normal conditions so complete that it is not always easy to decide whether a woman has given birth to a child or not. Of course, there are many cases in which tears reveal the former labor, but there are others in which it is not so, and the renewal of the birth process must, therefore, be nearly if not quite as painful as before, especially if it is recalled that succeeding children are usually larger. In spite of this in multiparae, labor has lost most of its terrors because real knowledge of its comparative ease has replaced the previous unfavorable suggestion, and instead there has come a proper appreciation of what will have to be borne, and of the positive pleasure of the relief when it has been borne successfully.

Healthy women of the lower classes have so little difficulty in labor that they are quite frank to confess that it means scarcely more than a few severe muscular pains during an hour or so. Some of them mind it so little that up to within half an hour of the birth of the baby they occupy themselves with other things and succeed effectually in distracting their pains away.

In their article on "Hypnotism and Suggestion in Obstetrics" Drs. Auvard and Secheron [Footnote 37] suggest that hypnotism can be employed with advantage during labor, but it is more difficult to produce it then than in the normal condition. Its only advantage is anesthesia, and this can be obtained during the preliminary pains in many cases. It is frequently impossible to produce complete anesthesia, however. To replace hypnotism they advise that suggestion in the waking state be used and they even suggest the employment of pseudo-choloroform or other like means. This method they consider more advisable than hypnotism, for there are no inconveniences and many real advantages. The nervous condition of the patient after hypnotism during labor is sometimes far from satisfactory.

[Footnote 37: "L'Hypnotisme et la Suggestion en Obstetrique," Paris, 1888.]

Nature's Methods.--In obstetrics and labor we have been finding in recent years that we have not trusted nature enough, have not looked sufficiently to the woman herself for assistance in its difficulties, and have made her too much a passive rather than an active factor. Practically all of the dangers that have accrued to the woman in childbirth, certainly many times more than have come from any other factor, have been due to well-meant but unfortunate attempts to help her while preventing her from helping herself. Before the middle of the nineteenth century most of the puerperal fever was due to infection from over-zealous but unclean attendants. Now men are proudly reporting hundreds of cases of delivery without even a vaginal examination. Above all, we have failed to take advantage of the occupation of mind that could be used to save women much of the anxiety and suffering of labor. If the parturient woman were allowed to change her position, as she does so naturally and frequently in a state of unsophistication, and to help actively, as she can {459} in many postures, in the delivery of her child, it would mean much in diverting her mind from pain which is emphasized by inactivity. The rule of having the woman lie on her back has been unfortunate in many ways and has required much more external interference than if other positions were adopted, while the pains have been more unbearable because that is actually the position in which the woman suffers most and in which she can do least to lessen them.

I was once told by an Irish grandmother the story of nearly one hundred deliveries without accident of any kind, in which the only rule had been not to touch the woman, but to allow her to change her position and, above all, to facilitate her in getting on her knees in a stooping bent-over posture so as to help herself. The upper mattress was doubled over completely and the woman was encouraged to kneel on the lower straw mattress, which was so arranged that it could be changed completely, or destroyed immediately after labor. This seemed old-fashioned and unscientific twenty years ago, when I heard the story, but I have been interested recently in reading Professor King's address on "The Significance of Posture in Obstetrics." [Footnote 38]

[Footnote 38: _Bulletin of the Lying-in Hospital_, Vol. V, No. IV.]

Professor King is sure that there are many advantages in following certain natural inclinations of the mother to change her position and that this helps her in many ways. Above all, as the psychotherapist sees at once, it will occupy her mind, keep down anxiety and lessen pain in many natural ways, besides encouraging concentration of attention on muscular effort instead of on painful sensation. The whole article is well worth reading, for in it he suggests that certain obstetrical operations, even version, would not be so often necessary, if the woman were sometimes allowed to assume the squatting position in the course of birth. His illustrations make very clear the help that changes of position are in the mechanics of many difficulties of labor. The pressure of the patient's thigh on the abdomen, when she was allowed to assume a squatting position, enabled him, in a case in which the woman had been in labor twenty-eight hours, in which ergot had been given by the midwife, in which the waters had been discharged and the uterus was tetanically contracted around its contents, to deliver the child without instrumentation and without further delay. In five minutes the arm (for it was an arm presentation) began to recede, and in twenty minutes the child was delivered, head first, and mother and infant both did well. Other cases with similar results have been reported by obstetricians quite as distinguished as Professor King. Many other experienced obstetrical teachers have expressed themselves to the same purpose in recent years.

Postures after Labor.--Allowing changes of position after labor also has its advantages. There is often retention of urine and this can be relieved by allowing the woman to assume the usual position. It may be impossible owing to the swelling and hyperemia in the neighborhood of her urethra for the woman to pass water, and yet if she is allowed to sit in the usual position upon a commode, she will in most cases pass her water in a few minutes without difficulty and the risks attending catheterization will be obviated. The power to urinate is due in these cases partly to the pressure of the thighs upon the abdomen which helps the bladder to contract and undoubtedly also to the suggestive influence that the position has.

{460}

NURSING

The attitude of mind of a woman toward her milk supply is important, as the flow of milk is closely subject to mental influence. The presence of the child and the consequent exercise of maternal instinct does more to bring about the prompt, healthy flow of milk than anything else. Sometimes women in the later months of their first pregnancy upon seeing a mother nursing her child have felt the flow of milk to their breasts not rarely with such painful overdistention of the milk ducts as to require artificial relief. On the other hand, a fright may stop the flow of milk or make it scanty and a mother's aversion to a child may prevent her being able to nurse it. The sight of the father of the child in a state of intoxication may have a similar result.

How much milk supply may be dependent on the state of mind, or at least the state of the nervous system, can be realized from the animals from which we obtain milk. Any serious disturbance is likely to interfere with the milk supply. When a cow's calf is taken away the animal will often refuse for a time to give milk. If a cow is scared, as by the attack of a wild animal, or by being hit though only slightly injured by an engine, it will often not have milk for several days or even longer. There is an impression prevalent among farmers that if a cow takes a dislike to a particular person they are not likely to "give down" as much milk as would otherwise be the case. This may be only a curious farmer tradition, that has no basis in fact, although it is supported by so many observations reported from many different countries that it is apparently to be taken as of scientific value.

In modern times many fashionable women do not nurse their children because they have not the proper supply of milk. It is easy to see how this can be brought about through suggestion from many sources and the sight of others neglecting their duty in this matter. Most fashionable women would rather not nurse their children, and yet many of them feel a bounden duty in the matter. Some of these, however, having heard that many mothers of the better class are not capable of nursing their children, easily persuade themselves that they come in this category, and so their whole attitude of mind toward nursing is one of extreme doubt. Knowing as we do how the mental state influences nursing we are not surprised when these women prove not to have sufficient milk in the early days of the nursing. If they are to have it they must look forward with confidence to nursing their children and they must be ready and willing to take such food and secure such fresh air as will put them in the best possible condition for this function, always with the thought that nothing can be better for a child than to be nursed by its own mother. Nature has made exactly the form of food suited for the particular child, and it matters not how healthy a wet nurse may be, her milk is not likely to be so suitable. Much depends on the nutrition of the child during this early susceptible period of its life and there is more that passes over with the milk than merely the food elements. It is well recognized now that the reason why nurslings are protected from most of the so-called children's diseases and the contagious diseases generally, is that, as a rule, their mothers {461} have had these diseases, have acquired an immunity to them and this immunity is transferred to the child so long as the nursing process is continued. This has been shown to be true over and over again in animals and holds good for human beings.

Professor Von Leyden, the distinguished professor of medicine at the University of Berlin, points out that we are not quite sure as yet just what may happen to the human race from the very general refusal of mothers to nurse their children and the almost universal substitution of the bovine mother; whether in times to come certain bovine traits, at least as regards susceptibility to disease, may not be stamped upon the human race, cannot be determined until this experiment in ethnology, now being conducted on so large a scale, has been carried to some definite conclusion.

Perhaps this view is groundless, but there is no doubt that milk is more than merely a food and that during the period after birth when the child's nervous system is being formed, the perfectly adapted mother's milk is more likely to be the proper food than anything that human ingenuity can elaborate. We have heard much in recent years of the tendency of education and civilization to lower the birth-rate and to make women less fitted for maternity and for such maternal duties as nursing, but stronger than any deterioration of the physical constitution by the mental development is the unfortunate unfavorable effect of mental suggestion upon such functions, by which the preparation of the organism for their fulfillment is greatly influenced. It is in this respect that the women of to-day differ from the woman of the past much more than in mere physical development.