Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 | Page 8

or even strenuous social duties and amusements. The numerous experiments and observations which have been made during recent years in Maternity Hospitals, more especially in France, have shown conclusively that not only the present and future well-being of the mother and the ease of her confinement, but the fate of the child, are immensely influenced by rest during the last month of pregnancy. "Every working woman is entitled to rest during the last three months of her pregnancy." This formula was adopted by the International Congress of Hygiene in 1900, but it cannot be practically carried out except by the co?peration of the whole community. For it is not enough to say that a woman ought to rest during pregnancy; it is the business of the community to ensure that that rest is duly secured. The woman herself, and her employer, we may be certain, will do their best to cheat the community, but it is the community which suffers, both economically and morally, when a woman casts her inferior children into the world, and in its own interests the community is forced to control both employer and employed. We can no longer allow it to be said, in Bouchacourt's words, that "to-day the dregs of the human species--the blind, the deaf-mute, the degenerate, the nervous, the vicious, the idiotic, the imbecile, the cretins and epileptics--are better protected than pregnant women."[5]
Pinard, who must always be honored as one of the founders of eugenics, has, together with his pupils, done much to prepare the way for the acceptance of this simple but important principle by making clear the grounds on which it is based. From prolonged observations on the pregnant women of all classes Pinard has shown conclusively that women who rest during pregnancy have finer children than women who do not rest. Apart from the more general evils of work during pregnancy, Pinard found that during the later months it had a tendency to press the uterus down into the pelvis, and so cause the premature birth of undeveloped children, while labor was rendered more difficult and dangerous (see, e.g., Pinard, _Gazette des H?pitaux_, Nov. 28, 1895, Id., _Annales de Gynécologie_, Aug., 1898).
Letourneux has studied the question whether repose during pregnancy is necessary for women whose professional work is only slightly fatiguing. He investigated 732 successive confinements at the Clinique Baudelocque in Paris. He found that 137 women engaged in fatiguing occupations (servants, cooks, etc.) and not resting during pregnancy, produced children with an average weight of 3,081 grammes; 115 women engaged in only slightly fatiguing occupations (dressmakers, milliners, etc.) and also not resting during pregnancy, had children with an average weight of 3,130 grammes, a slight but significant difference, in view of the fact that the women of the first group were large and robust, while those of the second group were of slight and elegant build. Again, comparing groups of women who rested during pregnancy, it was found that the women accustomed to fatiguing work had children with an average weight of 3,319 grammes, while those accustomed to less fatiguing work had children with an average weight of 3,318 grammes. The difference between repose and non-repose is thus considerable, while it also enables robust women exercising a fatiguing occupation to catch up, though not to surpass, the frailer women exercising a less fatiguing occupation. We see, too, that even in the comparatively unfatiguing occupations of milliners, etc., rest during pregnancy still remains important, and cannot safely be dispensed with. "Society," Letourneux concludes, "must guarantee rest to women not well off during a part of pregnancy. It will be repaid the cost of doing so by the increased vigor of the children thus produced" (Letourneux, _De l'Influence de la Profession de la Mère sur le Poids de l'Enfant_, Thèse de Paris, 1897).
Dr. Dweira-Bernson (_Revue Pratique d'Obstétrique et de Pédiatrie_, 1903, p. 370), compared four groups of pregnant women (servants with light work, servants with heavy work, farm girls, dressmakers) who rested for three months before confinement with four groups similarly composed who took no rest before confinement. In every group he found that the difference in the average weight of the child was markedly in favor of the women who rested, and it was notable that the greatest difference was found in the case of the farm girls who were probably the most robust and also the hardest worked.
The usual time of gestation ranges between 274 and 280 days (or 280 to 290 days from the last menstrual period), and occasionally a few days longer, though there is dispute as to the length of the extreme limit, which some authorities would extend to 300 days, or even to 320 days (Pinard, in Richet's Dictionnaire de Physiologie, vol. vii, pp. 150-162; Taylor, Medical Jurisprudence, fifth edition, pp. 44, 98 et