It is a very common circumstance for an inexperienced (or he may be an experienced, but ignorant) practitioner to attempt a rupture of the membranes, and in doing so, rupture the bladder, which would render the woman miserable during life. We are acquainted with twenty-five or thirty females who have met with this sad misfortune, and many of them have been attended by those who are termed our most successful, or old experienced physicians. Dr. Rush, speaking of child-bearing among the Indians, says, “that nature is their only _midwife_; their labors are short and accompanied with little pain; each woman is delivered in a private cabin, without so much as one of her own sex to attend her: after washing herself in cold water, she returns in a few days to her usual employment; so that she knows nothing of those accidents which proceed from the carelessness or ill management of _midwives_ or doctors, or the weakness which arises from a month’s confinement in a warm room.” Dr. Whitney remarks; “I have had many cases where I found the attendants alarmed, and some in tears, from supposing that they should have had help sooner, fearing the worst consequence from delay; but, admitting that the ‘doctor knew best,’ they would wait calmly for hours, when in nature’s time all ended well. I pledge myself as a physician, that all honest doctors will tell you that _labor_ is the work of _nature_, and she generally does it _best_ when left to herself.”[48] “Among the Araucanian Indians,” says Stevenson in his Twenty Years’ Residence in South America, “a mother, immediately on her delivery, takes her child, and going down to the nearest stream, washes herself and it, and returns to the usual labor of her station.” “The wonderful facility with which the Indian women bring forth their children,” say Lewis and Clark in their well known journal, “seems rather some benevolent gift of nature, in exempting them from pains which their savage state would render doubly grievous, than any result of habit. One of the women who had been leading two of our pack horses, halted at a rivulet about a mile behind, and sent on the two horses by a female friend. On enquiring of one of the Indian men the cause of her detention, he answered, with great appearance of unconcern, that she had just stopped to lie in, and would soon overtake us. In fact, we were astonished to see her in about an hour’s time come on with her new-born infant, and pass us on her way to the camp, apparently in perfect health.”