[6] The female flowing.

* * * * *




CHAPTER VI

_The Suffocation of the Mother._


This, which if simply considered, will be found to be merely the cause
of an effect, is called in English, "the suffocation of the mother," not
because the womb is strangled, but because by its retraction towards the
midriff and stomach, which presses it up, so that the instrumental cause
of respiration, the midriff, is suffocated, and acting with the brain,
cause the animating faculty, the efficient cause of respiration, also to
be interrupted, when the body growing cold, and the action weakened, the
woman falls to the ground as if she were dead.

Some women remain longer in those hysterical attacks than others, and
Rabbi Moses mentions some who lay in the fit for two days. Rufus writes
of one who continued in it for three days and three nights, and revived
at the end of the three days. And I will give you an example so that we
may take warning by the example of other men. Paroetus mentions a
Spanish woman who was suddenly seized with suffocation of the womb, and
was thought to be dead. Her friends, for their own satisfaction, sent
for a surgeon in order to have her opened, and as soon as he began to
make an incision, she began to move, and come to herself again with