Once the seas were cooled, there appeared upon the earth a strange phenomenon; a corpuscle of infinitesimal dimensions claims for itself the most important role in the harmony of all that was created. It has given evidence of strange restlessness; it vibrates with a rhythm which is absolute; it is infinitely small but there can be guessed in it the possibility of greatness: it lives. The Miracle has been initiated, but only for an instant. Life, initiated with timid stammering, lasted, on its first attempts, the length of time lightning lasts in space.
The onslaught of the elements, imposing the heavy tribute of the law of adaptation, made it impossible for the first beings to continue their line. But one day the once initiated chain continued uninterrupted reaching to out very time, exhibiting man as the product of perfection. But what of the untold sufferings that were necessary to maintain this uninterrupted chain of beings!.
Adaptation to the environment or death. Such is the dilemma offered to all living creatures. All adaptation signifies effort and when this is done at a sacrifice, when it becomes exaggerated, it then becomes pain, the newly born weeps, thus manifesting his suffering; it is the effort which implies the adaptation to the new environment. The normal and rhythmic functioning which is carried on without effort we are not aware of, and frequently we find it accompanied with a sensation of well being. Pain, on the contrary, is a frequent attribute of an altered function. Thus it fills pathology.
Among all the beings in creation, man, without doubt, is of a more exquisite sensibility and the one with the greatest aptitude for the perception of suffering. No other being pays so heavy a tax, for besides the physical pain, his spirit is daily affected by the most varied affections and –
-emotions, translated at times by suffering of such great magnitude that when he faces these sufferings the physical ones would be preferable. Sensibility being the essential stimulant of life, it reaches its maximum in man, and the highest tribute that he pays to pain is but the burden that he must correspond with for occupying the highest place in the scale of the living.
This exquisite, sensibility, this almost infinite capacity to react before the most varied stimulants, which reach their maximum in a pathological state, caused Hufeland, Hahnemanns friend, to exclaim: “The most sensitive reactive agent is the sick human being.”.
When the functions are carried on with the natural pause and rhythm, pain does not exist. For instance, normally we are not aware that we have kidneys or parotids, but when these organs pains us we perceive them clearly. When a traumatic agent comes to destroy or separate a member from out body, we suddenly come to realize that it was a part of our body, thanks to the pain its instruction or separation provokes. A tooth pains when its stability in the alveolar cavity is in danger.
Pain is a most useful warning. It transforms an important efforts of the organism into the attaining of an end. It tires, as all effort does, making one feel. It makes us realize that in this or that part of the body a struggle has begun between a pathogenic agent whose purpose is to destroy, and the defending organism. Thanks to it, we become aware of this condition and we try to save ourselves.
Occupying a special place in the field of physiology, we find the pains of labor with exceptional intensity as their characteristic. Ones attention is called to the fact that childbirth, being eminently a physiological act, should be not accompanied with such intense pains, for it is difficult to find in the field of normal physiology examples of physiological acts that are painful.
It would not be prudent to affirm that the pains of labor are as old as humanity itself, at least, with the characteristics with which they are observed today. One is inclined to think that this so-called civilization has contributed to the increase in intensity.
In fact, without having to allude as an argument daily observed that all higher mammals give birth without manifesting pain or suffering, let it be enough with the experience that all physicians have had observing the divers intensity of the pains of labor on a plain country woman, a woman of the middle class and a lady of the upper classes-supposedly refined; in this last mentioned type of woman, above all, it is frequent to observe pains of such intensity that the relatives become confused and not infrequently also the physician. Doubtless Ribot was right when he affirmed, “The sensibility of pain is in proportion to the stage of civilization.”.
Our spirit seems to rebel in contemplating the intense pains which childbirth brings about. Her tears, her groans and her despair hurt us, and we sometimes ask ourselves if Mother Nature acts wisely in demanding of the future mother such painful sacrifice, forgetting that the creatures under Gods care suffer no injustice. I firmly believe that all our sufferings and all our happiness are only the pay asked of us for our good or bad actions or those of our forefathers.
If man lives according to Nature, he would not have to lament being the stage of as many illnesses as pathology registers. A continual separation from moderation, man frequently suffers the consequence of his abuse through some ill feeling. Nature punishes him who violates its laws, and life under modern society is a continuous disobedience to its mandates. the inevitable consequence is a pathological state.
Our great teacher Hahnemann, in his small volume called philosophical Pastimes, published in 1795, said, open the subject of “the satisfaction of the senses”:.
The whole creation knows pleasure and happiness, whey then. to man, equipped with a more delicate and exquisite sensibility, should similar pleasure be denied?.
But it is not that such pleasures are denied to man, for, as is the case with the rest of the living beings, he is equipped to become adapted to them; what happens is that he himself deprives of enjoying, because he flounders upon making the right choice of pleasures or abusing them.
The constant search for pleasure, often over crooked paths which have led society to liver artificially, I believe has contributed in transforming a physiological act such as parturition into feat for the future mother and probably is the cause, also, of the pathological evidence seen in the most natural childbirth.
Humanity has never shown itself quite disposed and resigned to suffered and the biblical sentence which condemns a woman to give birth with pain has never been seen with the eye of approval by the majority of those affected. Proof of that is that since remote times the amelioration of the pains of labors has been attempted. The ancients were not unacquainted with the narcotic potions, for Theocritus mentions the fact that they were administered to Antigona.
But the problem of the application of anesthesia during parturition was definitely and firmly applied by Sir James Y. Simpson of Edinburgh when he used ether in an actual case. I believe it is the exceptional case when the homoeopath has to resort to anaesthesia in his case of childbirth in which mechanical intervention is not required. In this branch of homoeopathic medical practice, as in any other, the man who knows his materia medica, knows how to apply it, and above all, knows how to wait, will not have to resort to anaesthesia.
All anaesthesia, it must not be forgotten, is a more or less powerful toxic agent, and as long as anesthesia is obtained at the price of an intoxication, the ideal agent, whether atoxic or innocuous, will be a chimera. Since the time of Sir James, innumerable have been the anaesthetic agents used and put in practice; their own constant mutation speaks high for their own condemnation.
The application of anaesthesia during parturition signifies an act contra nature, or against nature. Vanity in man has induced him to become the master of Nature, modifying its ordained and always wise processes; punishment soon appears in the form of complications. The accoucheur who systematically uses anaesthesia with his patients is comparable to the wayfarer who involuntarily blinds his eyes and explores his way only with the staff of the blind.
It is certain that in the majority of cases anaesthesia should not be used in obstetrical practice; that of course does not mean that the woman should be left unaided and abandoned wholly to her suffering. Homoeopathy when practiced in its purest form is capable of modifying pain, making more bearable the sufferings of the future mother. “Homoeopathy,” says Dr.W.A. Yingling in the preface of his wonderful book entitled The Accoucheurs Emergence Manual, “is womens best friend.” We have all at one time or other have proven the marvelous effects of Chamomilla, for instance, when the woman has suggested us its use when she uses the typical and anguish-filled expression; “Doctor, I cant stand it any longer; help me or kill me; I cannot stand it!”.
