"If the delicacy which results from a luxurious and inactive life renders the movements of the womb more painful, we should attribute the irregularity which renders them sometimes fatal to the mother and the child, to a disordered sensibility, which is excited by attempts almost always ill-directed, and almost always executed by mischance. It is in this disturbance that the infant assumes those disadvantageous positions of which the accoucheurs and midwives unquestionably exaggerate the danger, to put a higher value on their 'manipulations;'[45] but which, in effect, render the delivery longer and more laborious: disturbance maintained and augmented by the embarrassment which the presence of a number of persons, some dear, others odious, some unknown, who in general fill the chamber of a woman in labour, must naturally produce, BY THE TORMENTS OF A MODESTY TOO LITTLE REGARDED, by an air of importance too much affected, which the assistants, and others who are to operate, throw over the affair in which they are engaged. All these objects must excite a variety of sentiments in the woman, which, by distracting her mind, necessarily disturb the organic action of the parts which should perform the delivery. Happy is it, if too presumptuous accoucheurs and midwives do not, by their precocious tentatives, solicit in her a nature which is not yet prepared to engage itself, precipitate its movements, and consequently abort the fruit which they ought to await, weary the parts already too much irritated, and rendered too sensible by the orgasm and tension which they have suffered, and hurry both mother and child into inevitable ruin.