(1) Use the same means of bringing away the after-birth, that you made use of to bring away the birth; for the same care and circumspection are needful now that there were then.

(2) Considering that the labouring woman cannot but be much spent by what she has already undergone in bringing forth the infant, be therefore sure to give her something to comfort her.  And in this case good jelly broths, also a little wine and toast in it, and other comforting things, will be necessary.

(3) A little hellebore in powder, to make her sneeze, is in this case very proper.

(4) Tansey, and the stone aetites, applied as before directed, are also of good use in this case.

(5) If you take the herb vervain, and either boil it in wine, or a syrup with the juice of it, which you may do by adding to it double its weight of sugar (having clarified the juice before you boil it), a spoonful of that given to the woman is very efficacious to bring away the secundine; and feverfew and mugwort have the same operation taken as the former.

(6) Alexanders[10] boiled in wine, and the wine drank, also sweet servile, sweet cicily, angelica roots, and musterwort, are excellent remedies in this case.

(7) Or, if this fail, the smoke of marigolds, received up a woman’s privities by a funnel, have been known to bring away the after-birth, even when the midwife let go her hold.

(8) Boil mugwort in water till it be very soft, then take it out, and apply it in the manner of a poultice to the navel of the labouring woman, and it instantly brings away the birth.  But special care must be taken to remove it as soon as they come away, lest by its long tarrying it should draw away the womb also.

SECT.  IV.—­Of Laborious and Difficult Labours and how the Midwife is
    to proceed therein.

There are three sorts of bad labours, all painful and difficult, but not all properly unnatural.  It will be necessary, therefore, to distinguish these.

The first of these labours is that when the mother and child suffer very much extreme pain and difficulty, even though the child come right; and this is distinguishably called the laborious labour.

The second is that which is difficult and differs not much from the former, except that, besides those extraordinary pains, it is generally attended with some unhappy accident, which, by retarding the birth, causes the difficulty; but these difficulties being removed, it accelerates the birth, and hastens the delivery.

Some have asked, what is the reason that women bring forth their children with so much pain?  I answer, the sense of feeling is distributed to the whole body by the nerves, and the mouth of the womb being so narrow, that it must of necessity be dilated at the time of the woman’s delivery, the dilating thereof stretches the nerves, and from thence comes the pain.  And therefore the reason why some women have more pain in their labour than others, proceeds from their having the mouth of the matrix more full of nerves than others.  The best way to remove those difficulties that occasion hard pains and labour, is to show first from whence they proceed.  Now the difficulty of labour proceeds either from the mother, or child, or both.