"Midwife" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would not condemn them all to suckle fools, and chronicle small beer! No. Women might certainly study the art of healing, and be physicians as well as nurses. And midwifery, decency seems to allot to them, though I am afraid the word midwife, in our dictionaries, will soon give place to accoucheur, and one proof of the former delicacy of the sex be ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... into the world two months too soon, I was in such a hurry. My mother was alone and had no help. When the midwife came I had arrived already. I was so feeble that the first few years great care had to be taken of me to keep me alive. I was well made enough, but not strong, and this was the source of many vexations to me during ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... renown of which establishments was duly heralded on their respective fronts. It was a little house, and this was the more convenient; for Mrs Gamp being, in her highest walk of art, a monthly nurse, or, as her sign-board boldly had it, 'Midwife,' and lodging in the first-floor front, was easily assailable at night by pebbles, walking-sticks, and fragments of tobacco-pipe; all much more efficacious than the street-door knocker, which was so constructed as to wake ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... The office of midwife was hereditary in the family of the basket-maker. It belonged to his wife. She might not be competent, but the office was hers, anyway. Her pay was not high—25 cents for a boy, and half as much for a girl. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of 'er, doctor?' said Mrs. Hodges, bustling forwards authoritatively in her position of midwife and sick-nurse. ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... in 1574.[254] He left his property called Madywattons, at Shrawley, to his son George, with remainder to his daughter Annis, and L20 to his son Thomas. He left legacies to his brothers Nicolas and Thomas and his Aunt Ley, the midwife. His wife's name was Eleanor. His goods were prised at L8 6s. 8d. by Thomas and William Shaxper, among others. The will of Richard Shakespere, of Rowington, November 13, 1613, which caused so much heartburning, showed ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... Was sickly; and a smile was seen to pass Across the midwife's cheek, when, holding up The feeble wretch, she to the father said, "A fine man-child!" What else could they expect? The father being, as I said ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... nations. Ye safe unriddlers of the stars, pray tell, By what name shall I stamp my miracle? Thou strange inverted Aeson, that leap'st ore From thy first infancy into fourscore, That to thine own self hast the midwife play'd, And from thy brain spring'st forth the heav'nly maid! Thou staffe of him bore him, that bore our sins, Which, but set down, to bloom and bear begins! Thou rod of Aaron, with one motion hurl'd, Bud'st a perfume of flowers ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... women again raise the salver and the party fares back to Vishnu's house, where a rude shrine of Satvai (the Sixth Mother) has been prepared. "For," whispers our guide, "Chandrabai died without worshipping Satvai and her spirit must perforce fulfil those rites." Close to the shrine sits a midwife keeping guard over a new gauze cloth, a sari and a bodice, purchased for the spirit of Chandrabai; and on a plate close at hand are vermilion for her brow, antimony for her eyes, a nose-ring, a comb, bangles and sweetmeats, ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... a certain piece in the beef, called the mouse-piece, which given to the child, or party so affected to eat, doth certainly cure the thrush. From an experienced midwife. ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... here that the distinction between the Greek and the Hebrew method is most marked. Socrates, for example, called himself the midwife of men's thoughts. His maxim was, "Know thyself." His cross-examination was designed to make men see for themselves. That is, he taught by reason. But the prophet's claim was, "Thus saith the Lord!" He spoke out of his ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... adherents of the new dogmas. That other phase was the driving power of instinct, a power uncontrolled and unnoticed. The great fundamental instinct of sex was expressing itself in these ever-growing broods, in the prosperity of the slum midwife and her colleague the slum undertaker. In spite of all my sympathy with the dream of liberated Labor, I was driven to ask whether this urging power of sex, this deep instinct, was not at least partially responsible, along with industrial ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... 'Requiem' found his resting-place. By this time the weather had proved too much for all the mourners; they had dropped off one by one, and Mozart's body was accompanied only by the driver of the carriage. There had been already two pauper funerals that day—one of them a midwife—and Mozart was to be the third in the ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... then the noble plot is fit for birth; And labouring France cries out for midwife hands. We missed surprising of the king at Blois, When last the states were held: 'twas oversight; Beware we make not ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... honour. This he did, and, a few days before the time when she expected to be delivered, he begged her to try a change of air and remove to his house, where she would recover her health more quickly than at home. Thither she went with but a very small following, and found there a midwife who had been summoned as for her brother's wife, and who one night, without recognising her, delivered her of a fine little girl. The gentleman gave the child to a nurse, and caused it to be ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... herself to be with child. The emperor expressed great joy, which was communicated to all the court, and spread throughout the empire of Persia. Upon this news the two sisters came to pay their compliments, and proffered their service to deliver her, desiring her, if not provided with a midwife, to accept of them. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... of Birch was like ice. He was one of those who by nature are fitted for cold and ruthless action in time of stress. Most of his money had been made across the dissecting table of enterprises, and not at their birth. He was a financial surgeon, but no midwife, and had only been magnetized into his past support by the hypnotic personality of Clark. He was grimly mindful that Marsham, after waiting for years for his opening, had got more than even. Birch's cold mind now wondered for the first time whether, after all, the cut throat game ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... warning wenches now, That Lady Adhan giues vnto you all, Were you not better marriage to allow, Then in a manner for a Midwife call: I thinke you were if I might iudge the cause, How say you Susan, speake ...
— The Bride • Samuel Rowlands et al
... differ. But I will tell you two of the stories. A Trold lived in a barrow between two church towers, about a mile from each other. This Trold had a wife, who was of Christian folk. It was necessary to get the services of a midwife, and the Trold fetched the nearest, and gave her for her services what appeared to be two pieces of charcoal; but the Trold's wife told her to take them home, but warned her that as soon as she put one foot outside ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... pleasures was to unmoor the patricians' gondolas, and to let them float at random along the canals, enjoying by anticipation all the curses that gondoliers would not fail to indulge in. We would rouse up hurriedly, in the middle of the night, an honest midwife, telling her to hasten to Madame So-and-so, who, not being even pregnant, was sure to tell her she was a fool when she called at the house. We did the same with physicians, whom we often sent half dressed to some nobleman who was enjoying ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... for them, that they might come often. At first they did not stir from thence all day.(297) Rabban Gamaliel the elder ordained, that they might go 2,000 cubits on every side. And not only they, but the midwife going to a birth; and they who go to rescue from fire, or from enemies, or from inundation, or from fallen buildings. These are as inhabitants of the place, and they have 2,000 ...
— Hebrew Literature
... I come. 'Sbud, a man had as good be a professed midwife as a professed whoremaster, at this rate; to be knocked up and raised at all hours, and in all places. Pox on 'em, I won't come. D'ye hear, tell 'em I won't come. Let 'em snivel and cry their ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... songs. While she is pregnant she is made to work in the house so as not to be inactive. After the birth of a child the mother remains impure for twelve days. A woman of the Mang or Mahar caste acts as midwife, and always breaks her bangles and puts on new ones after she has assisted at a birth. If delivery is prolonged the woman is given hot water and sugar or camphor wrapped in a betel-leaf, or they put a few grains of gram into her hand and then someone takes ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... love, nor fear. Indeed, 't is true that Henry told me of; For I have often heard my mother say I came into the world with my legs forward. Had I not reason, think ye, to make haste And seek their ruin that usurp'd our right? The midwife wonder'd; and the women cried 'O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!' And so I was, which plainly signified That I should snarl and bite and play the dog. Then, since the heavens have shap'd my body so, Let ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... it upon a former occasion. They got it all out of books, and at the first hint coming from any of our little progressive corners in Petersburg they were prepared to throw anything overboard, so soon as they were advised to do so, Madame Virginsky practised as a midwife in the town. She had lived a long while in Petersburg as a girl. Virginsky himself was a man of rare single-heartedness, and I have seldom met more ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... three younger seamsters under her, that she taught to sew. We made the clothes for all the house servants and fiel' hans. My mother made some of the clothes for my marster and missis. My mother was a midwife too, and useter go to all the birthings on our place. She had a bag she always carried and when she went to other plantations she had a horse and buggy ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... Mrs. Brangwen was put to bed, the midwife came. Night fell, the shutters were closed, Brangwen came in to tea, to the loaf and the pewter teapot, the child, silent and quivering, playing with glass beads, the house, empty, it seemed, or exposed to the winter night, as if it ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Churms and Lelia comes along: He walks as stately as the great baboon. Zounds, he looks as though his mother were a midwife. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... branches filled with little, naked urchins, seemingly just ripened into life, and crying for succour: beneath, a woman holds up her apron, looking wistfully at the children, as if intreating them to jump into her lap. On inquiry, I found it to be the house of a sworn midwife, with this Dutch ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... rabbits. All the people mentioned were connected with this case. Nathaniel St. Andre was the surgeon and anatomist to the King, and Cyriacus Ahlers the King's private surgeon; John Howard was the apothecary. The imposture was finally brought to light before Sir Richard Manningham (the famous man-midwife who probably influenced Sterne) and Dr. James Douglas. Among the many contemporary pamphlets on this subject is one by ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... calls her the Tough Old Stick. Excellent name! I can picture her in her cottage up on land, bringing up her long family with much shouting, much hard common sense, some swearing and a deal of useful prejudice. Now, in her second youth—not second childhood—she is mainly a lace-worker and midwife. One night, Tony and myself broke into her cottage, locked the door behind us and helped ourselves to what supper we could find—which was pickled beetroot and raw eggs. Grannie Pinn climbed in upon ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... to some faint meaning make pretense, But Shadwell never deviates into sense. . . . The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull With this ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... whom, as I write, Naked and whimpering, in her arms receives The midwife! They those longed-for days may hope To see, when, after careful studies we Shall know, and every nursling shall imbibe That knowledge with the milk of the dear nurse, How many hundred-weight of salt, and how Much flesh, how many bushels, too, of ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... lessons in deportment with his primal pap; and in India all good little boys, who hope to go to heaven when they die, keep their noses clean, and never romp or whistle. As to girls it matters less; the midwife gets only half price for consummating that sort of blunder; for when you are dead only a son can carry you out and bury you dacent,—no daughter, though she pray with the power and perseverance of the Seven Penitents, can procure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... multiplication, by the way, it is related in this centenary book, among much curious information, that when another Franzfelder comes into the world it is usual to present certain largesse to the midwife, namely, one gulden (this was written in Austrian times), a loaf of bread, a little jar of lard and a few kilograms of white flour. In the old military period this personage was also, like the doctor and the schoolmaster, "on the strength." The last of those who bore ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein |
