More Modern Myths

You might think that pregnancy (and childbirth) is a natural condition, and for around 80% of women it is. The other 20% have ‘problems’ of varying degrees of seriousness, and it’s true that some complications are really serious, and, sadly, there are still maternal deaths. Whether this is enough to ‘force’ all women to have a hospital confinement is a debatable problem, and one that I’m not in a position to discuss, though I can mark it up.

Until quite recently, there was another problem with pregnancy. On the maternity chart there were fields for the mothers’ name, date of birth and so on. And there was one for ‘date of marriage’. 

This field was often left blank, but it was previously important. If there was less than nine months between the two dates, there might be some discreet sniggering, but not much more. You might find it hard to believe, but women who could not fill this in were treated differently from those who could. Nowadays, labour shouldn’t go on for more than eight hours or so without some sort of intervention. Not so long ago, up to 24 hours was acceptable before intervention. But for some women (or, perhaps they were girls) it was acceptable to let them labour for 48 hours. Nothing like a good, if disguised, dose of moralising to bring it home to you, just what were the consequences of your actions.

You don’t believe me? Just a senior, retired obstetrician. If necessary, ply him — it will always be a him — with strong drink.

Girls have been riding bicycles for well over a century, yet, strangely, it’s only recently that they have reported problems. It seems that some of them feel that their labia minora are being traumatised, are being made painful by this activity. And so, they request what can only be seen as a cosmetic procedure to reduce the ‘excessive’ length of their nymphae. Unusually, this ‘disease’ is one that patients have discovered, not one ‘invented’ by their medical practitioners.

Circumcision was, a century ago, seen as a very valuable prophylactic against syphilis for which there was little in the way of medical treatment, though mercury preparations might help to alleviate some of the worst of the tertiary symptoms. Syphilis was then an incurable disease, and while abstinence was to be desired, this was qualified by the reality.

There’s now a movement for prophylactic circumcision to control HIV transmission. HIV is another disease that, as I understand it, can’t be cured, though progression (to AIDS) can be controlled. Those who advocate circumcision would be well advised to remember the previous efforts to control syphilis — it didn’t work.