Sentence:  To muster the strength for the final push in childbirth, midwives like Granny Lewis of Burlington, North Carolina, quilled the mother-to-be. With <WSD>quilling</WSD> the midwife placed the snuff on one end of the straw and blew it into the nostril of the woman at the right time; the great sneeze that resulted from the woman was accompanied by the birth of the child. Granny Lewis and others used <WSD>quilling</WSD> well into the 1930s (Kirby, p192). 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  The practice of blowing pepper or snuff through a quill into the nose of a woman who is giving birth, to induce sneezing and diaphragmatic contractions which will induce or hasten labor.