The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-07-18 00:00:00

nature drinks in by a manifold sympathy of lif

the renewing energies which are
—around, below, and above us. Inc
health is concerned this season must bear away the palm
a corres-

g on ev
utably

for there are periodicities in our nature havin'g

pondenc(

sometimes manifest, often occult, with the ani-

mate and inanimate groupir
might be urged in a strikir
keeping of th
away from our immediate task

around us ; and much
ff ay on the tone and mystic
et harmonies ; but it would lead us
To the valetudinarian

then, we commend the.." opening day" of the year,

weather, bright and sunny;but fleeting, often, and delu-
sive, which called forth poor Kirk White's graphic lines

"A little sun, a little rain—
A peevish April day."

14. Autumn, too, has its enthusiastic admirers : it is
the season chiefly worshipped by poetic temperaments—
that "genus irritabile vatum," whose keen sensibilities,
tastes, and feelings, nnrsed so carefully and capriciously,
give it a colour of their own—their

"Eyes see all around, in gloom or glow
Hues of their own, fresh borrow'd from the heart;

and thus the season of calm decline—this fading chaplet

hough she were the personification of mela-ncholy,wheire
.s a mind of more common and cheerful tone passe

through the rich colours, the laden trees, the bird's

joyous song, the falling leaf even without reading pain-
fully the lesson of silently-operating change, without
being started with the echo of Spring reverterating less
and less from approaching winter's icy cape! And so should
the cheerful equal mind relish every season, each tracing
its own significant and appropriate emblems of life, re-
hearsing in beauteous types the corresponding ages of
man, until the revolution of the year-circle has completed
and pointed the moral of our life-circle.

Red o'er the forest peers the.
The line of yellow light dies fast away
That crown'd the eastern copse : and chill and dun
Falls on the moor the brief November day.

,etting sun,

•
Now the tir'd hunter winds a parting note,
And echo bids goo.l night from every glade.
Yet wait awhile, and see the calm leaves float
Each to his rest beneath their parent shade:!—Keble

Thus sings a cheerful poet ; and we are landed in
15. Winter—wherein short days make short work, and
nipping frosts bind earth and water into one iron-faced
resistance to man's busy-handed industry: yet may, ne-
vertheless, even here, the enterprising footsteps procure
judicious and glowing exercise, in robust play of the

Having paid our court to the seasons, in the most sea-
sonable manner we could, let us then now descend to
look into some of the dry and matter offact details of pre-
paration for a pedestrian trip, which, though somewhat
at first uninviting, yet we premise thus much to every and
all—poet or naturalist—philosopher or man of business--
that the poetry of nature's changing garb and features,
—the science of her thousand ways of wonder working
life—the t one of her swest influence on the mind and
body—will he promoted in no trifling degree, by our secur-
ing, as far as practicable and foreseen, those conditions
actually essential to the comfort and success of a pedes-
trian ramble ; for if great things are only the summing
up of small things, as, in the fable, the grateful ant stung
the leg of the man whose deadly aim was thereby diverted
from sacrificing the poor bird to whose kind act of rescue
when in danger the ant had previously owed her own
life—how can we despise even the least matter which
can exercise an influence for good or evil on our journey's
successful issue. Who has not had to experience the
hitter mortification of having a trip on foot spoilt by some
trifle, unheeded or unanticipated in the hey-day of
the start ! What corn began to complain on the second
day ? What sore heel from the wear of an ill-fit-
ting boot or shoe, has not destroyed all the soaring
pleasure of our excursion, just when the country
began to open to our eager gaze ; and who that has
so paid the penalty of incaution and neglect at start-
ing does not wish to take good care that such shall not
happen again to themselves, or to any friend, indeed,
starting on a similar trip, and who will listen to the voice
of experience in the matter.
To enter, then, forthwith into all manner of " Hints"
andyractical suggestions.

17. In the first place, the reader will be, perhaps,
snrprised to learn how many things need to be attended
to in preparing for a few days or weeks excursion into
the country ; and, further, that you must begin to train
and harden yourself a day or two before actual setting
out.

(To be continued.)
-.•-

LYING-IN HOSPITALS

The art and science of midwifery is of very early origin,
coeval with, if not antecedent to, the science of medicine,
and appears to have been considered as a distinct depart-
ment of medical practice from the most remote ages of
antiquity. Thus the most ancient writer in the world
refers to the midwives who attend upon Rachel, the wife
of Jacob, upon Thamer, the widow of Er, and upon the
Hebrew women during the Egyptian captivity. The
author of the first book of Samuel makes reference to the
midwife who attended upon the wife of Phineas, the son
of Eli. Hippocrates, the most ancient medical author
extant, who lived 1,000 years after Moses, and about 400
years before Christ, collected the disjointed fragments of
information which lay scattered abroad, in reference to
midwifery, as well as to medicine and surgery, and pre-
scribed more for diseases of females than for any others.
The works of Celsus, Aretteus, Moschion, Rufus,
Ephesus, Galen, /Etius, Paulus lEgineta, and many
others amongst the Greeks, abound with instructions
in midwifery, and several of the plans of treatment re-
commended by the moderns were clearly predicated by
ancients of the Greek school. A succession of Arabian
authors, Serapion, Rhazes, Avicenna, and Albucacis,
brings us down to the twelfth century. In the following
century the practice of medicine began to be encouraged
in England. In the year 1532, Eucharius Rhodion, a
German, published a treatise on parturition. The next
book of any importance upon our subject was published
in England in 1540 by Dr. Raynalde. Ambrose Pars in
France, and the illusti ious Harvey in England contri-
buted materially to the improvement of midwifery during
this century. _

Hitherto, the practice of midwifery had been almost
exclusively confined to female practitioners, the assistance
of the physician or surgeon being required only in cases
of extreme difficulty and responsibility. The Duchesse
de la Valliere, the favourite mistress of Louis XIV., was
the first female who placed herself under the exclusive
care of a male practitioner. This event occurred in 1663.
The elevated rank of the duchesse furnished to other
ladies of all ranks of society an example land an induce-
ment to employ male practitioners, and Julian Clement,
the attendant upon the duchesse, received shortly after-
wards the new appointment of accoucheur to the princesses
of France.
The increase of civilisation, together with its con-
comitants, crowded cities, unwholesome diet, hard la-
bour, personal and moral restraints, occupations injurious
to health and calculated to weaken the frame, stunt the
growth, and destroy that beautiful symmetry of form
which nature has given—whether the consequence of
necessity amongst the poor or the effects of luxury and
self indulgence amongst the rich—must have tended to
induce difficulty and danger in child birth, vastly greater
than those occurring under circumstances more favour-
able to health.
The increase of these difficulties would necessarily im-
press the sex with a powerful sense of danger; and the
I manifest incapability of the ordinary midwife in cases of
eltraurdinary of severity, would
induce them and their friends to apply to the medical man