The opening of Introduction
By the term Midwifery is understood the knowledge and art of treating a woman and her child during her pregnancy, labour, and the puerperal state. We employ it in this extended sense, because most systematic writers of later times have adopted this arrangement. The terms, Art des Accouchemens of the French, the Ostetricia, and Arte della Parteria, of the Italians and Spaniards, and the Geburtshülfe of the Germans, are restricted to the process of parturition, although they have been and continue to be, used in the same extended sense as that in which we propose to use the term Midwifery.
Although pregnancy and parturition, strictly speaking, are perfectly natural functions, yet they involve such a complication and variety of other processes, and also changes of such extent, that the whole system is rendered more or less subservient to them during the periods of their existence: hence, therefore, their number and variety must ever render them more or less liable to deviations and irregularities of action, which will necessarily be aggravated by the effects of civilized life, and in many instances are productive of derangement in the general economy of the system.