FOOTNOTES: 

[6] The female flowing.

* * * * *

CHAPTER VI

     The Suffocation of the Mother.

This, which if simply considered, will be found to be merely the cause of an effect, is called in English, “the suffocation of the mother,” not because the womb is strangled, but because by its retraction towards the midriff and stomach, which presses it up, so that the instrumental cause of respiration, the midriff, is suffocated, and acting with the brain, cause the animating faculty, the efficient cause of respiration, also to be interrupted, when the body growing cold, and the action weakened, the woman falls to the ground as if she were dead.

Some women remain longer in those hysterical attacks than others, and Rabbi Moses mentions some who lay in the fit for two days.  Rufus writes of one who continued in it for three days and three nights, and revived at the end of the three days.  And I will give you an example so that we may take warning by the example of other men.  Paroetus mentions a Spanish woman who was suddenly seized with suffocation of the womb, and was thought to be dead.  Her friends, for their own satisfaction, sent for a surgeon in order to have her opened, and as soon as he began to make an incision, she began to move, and come to herself again with great cries, to the horror and surprise of all those present.

In order that the living may be distinguished from the dead, old writers prescribe three experiments.  The first is, to lay a feather on the mouth, and by its movements you may judge whether the patient be alive or dead; the second is, to place a glass of water on the breast, and if it moves, it betokens life; the third is, to hold a bright, clean, looking-glass to the mouth and nose, and if the glass be dimmed with a little moisture on it, it betokens life.  These three experiments are good, but you must not depend upon them too much, for though the feather and the glass do not move, and the looking-glass continues bright and clear, yet it is not a necessary consequence that she is dead.  For the movement of the lungs, by which breathing is produced, may be checked, so that she cannot breathe, and yet internal heat may remain, which is not evident by the motion of the breast or lungs, but lies hidden in the heart and arteries.

Examples of this we find in flies and swallows, who seem dead to all outward appearances, breathless and inanimate, and yet they live by that heat which is stored up in the heart and inward arteries.  At the approach of summer, however, the internal heat, being restored to the outer parts, they are then brought to life again, out of their sleeping trance.

Those women, therefore, who apparently die suddenly, and from no visible cause, should not be buried until the end of three days, lest the living be buried instead of the dead.