(=c=) _The belief, deeply rooted in the modern and lay minds, that it is God’s decree that children should be brought forth in sorrow._ Having rejected the _Genesis_ version of the origin of man and all living creatures, it is remarkable that the modern world, led by its men of science, should take so seriously a curse mentioned in the first book of Moses, which, even if its effect be admitted as possible, had probably only a tribal or national application when it was uttered. And it is still more odd that they should regard us and our womenfolk as still lying under its spell. For, apart from the fact that there are savage and semi-civilized tribes still in existence with whom childbirth is not nearly such a sorrowful event as some might suppose, but a simple and easy function (_teste_ almost every ethnological work), why should we assume that the Jewish women, to whom the curse originally applied, were normal or lived normally? From our knowledge of the Syrian Jewess, it seems highly probable that, if her remote ancestors resembled her, their confinements must have been extremely sorrowful. But what has that to do with us? This never seems to have occurred to the modern medical man; and, taking the _Genesis_ curse as his motto, he has now solemnly allowed the agony to be piled up, till it is no longer merely in sorrow, but almost in tragedy, that children are brought forth—not to mention the extra-corporeal equipment of instruments, etc. And, why should there be any limit? When once the principle is admitted, where is the line to be drawn, particularly if it pays not to draw it? We protest, however, that even if we admit—which we do not—that there must be “sorrow,” this can hardly have meant the miserable failure and elaborate scientific technique which modern medicine has made of parturition in general. Now, in view of these three articles of faith, not only are the doctors and the public in an attitude that paralyses all endeavour to effect a change for the better, but both the doctors and the public have ceased to ask whether any such change is possible. Having ceased to ask the question, no effort is made to inquire into the means of achieving the end it suggests; and, as usual, everything is staked on artificial aids. Anyone who, like ourselves, asks whether there are not other ways of overcoming the enormous difficulties of parturition among modern women, in order to remove this cloud from life and love and restore pleasure to a natural function, is laughed at. Nevertheless the present writer continues to ask the question, and for the following reasons: