Aristotle's works:: Containing the Master-piece, Directions for Midwives, and Counsel and Advice to Child-bearing Women with Various Useful Remedies
Aristotle · en
V. Excoriations, bruises, and rents of the lower part of the womb are
often occasioned by that violent distention and separation of the four
carbuncles in a woman’s labour. For the healing whereof, as soon as the
woman is laid, if there be only simple contusions and excoriations, then
let the anodyne cataplasms, formerly directed, be applied to the lower
parts to ease the pain, made of the yolks and whites of new-laid egg and
oil of roses, boiled a little over warm embers, continually stirring it
till it is mixed, and then spread on a fine cloth; it must be applied
very warm to the bearing-place for five or six hours, and when it is
taken away, lay some fine rags, dipped in oil of St. John’s wort twice
or thrice a day; also foment the parts with barley-water and honey of
roses, to cleanse them from the excrements which pass.
VI. The curding and clotting of the milk is another accident which
happens to women in child-bed; for, in the beginning of child-bed, the
woman’s milk is not purified, because of the great commotions her body
suffered during her labour, which affected all the parts, and it is then
moved with many humours. Now this clotting of the milk does, for the
most part, proceed from the breasts not being fully drawn, and that
either because she has too much milk, and that the infant is too small
and weak to suck all, or because she does not desire to be a nurse; for
the milk, in those cases remaining in the breast after concoction,
without being drawn, loseth the sweetness and the balsamic quality it
had, and by reason of the heat it acquires, and the too long stay it
makes there, it sours, curds, and clots, in like manner as we see runnet
put into ordinary milk turn it into curds. The curding of the milk may
be also caused by having taken a great cold, and not keeping the breast
well covered.
But from what cause soever this curding of the milk proceeds, the most
certain remedy is, speedily to draw the breasts until it is emitted and
dried. But in regard that the infant, by reason of weakness, cannot draw
strong enough, the woman being hard marked when her milk is curded, it
will be most proper to get another woman to draw her breasts until the
milk comes freely, and then she may give her child suck. And that she
may not afterwards be troubled with a surplus of milk, she must eat such
diet as gives but little nourishment, and keep her body open.