Polak says the morphine shortens the first stage of labor by softening the cervix, but that the treatment lengthens the second stage. Other observers have not found that it shortens the first period. He tells us that if this second stage--that is, the time from the full dilatation of the os until the delivery of the child--lasts over an hour in multiparae, or over two hours in primiparae, delivery must be effected by the Kristeller expression or by low forceps. In the Kristeller expression the child is pushed out of the canal by the hands of the physician applied to the fundus uteri. It should be a method of last resort, because there is danger of rupturing the uterus, of tearing the placenta loose, or of crushing an ovary. In his report Polak says he has had no failures; the patients had no recollection of the labor; in the first series of fifty-one the children showed no sign of asphyxiation or even cyanosis except in two cases. In this first series one patient had a long second stage and the child had to be resuscitated. There were, he said, no post-partum hemorrhages; no low forceps; the placentas were delivered without difficulty; none of the women showed signs of tire or exhaustion the next day; in fact, they were better off than the women who have normal labor. This report is different from that made by other men just as competent, and in exactly the same circumstances; even Gauss confesses many failures. The lay journals say Gauss had no failures, but he himself should know. In April, 1915, I was told in New York City that there had been no failures there, yet in May, Dr. Broadhead, professor of obstetrics at the Postgraduate School of Medicine in that city, after observing seventy-two cases confessed[208] several failures where the child was concerned. One Catholic woman, a member of the executive committee in a Twilight Sleep League of married and unmarried women, was killed in Brooklyn by the method in the summer of 1915. [208] _The Postgraduate_, May, 1915. Dr. Charles M. Green, professor of obstetrics in Harvard University, tells us:[209] "My own observations, published in 1903, led me at the time to favor this therapeutic means of producing the 'Twilight Sleep,' and removing the consciousness of pain, or at least preventing all remembrance of it. I have long since abandoned this agent, however, for two reasons: First, because it has apparently been the cause, occasionally, of fetal asphyxia. Second, because the effect of the drug on the mother is often uncertain, and unless used with great care may cause unfavorable or dangerous results. Moreover, we have other and safer measures for the relief of pain in labor. So I have given up teaching the use of scopolamine in my lectures." [209] _Ladies' Home Journal._