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3. SUSPENDED.

Not unfrequently the negroes in our southern States still follow the customs brought from their African homes, or merely handed down by tradition; in their method of delivery they do not vary from that of the tribe from which they sprang. Occasionally the erect posture is taken, and a graphic description of such a labor has been given me, as witnessed in Louisiana. A negress gave birth to a child while hanging on to the limb of a tree. She would raise herself from the ground during the pains, whilst the assistant who was with her took charge of the child after it was born.[21]

In some portions of Finland, among the Esthen, as well as in some portions of Russia, the women are delivered in a similar manner while hanging to a cross-bar; they attempt, as it were, to shake out the child.[22]

We have the authority of Father Och that, in Brazil, the parturient woman occasionally has her arms tied to a tree while she is waited on by some old hags until the delivery is completed.[23]

In some portions of Germany, though the instances are

rare, the woman is delivered suspended in the arms of her husband, who seizes her from behind and raises her up, so that she is bent backward to such a degree that the tips of the toes barely touch the ground.[24]

FIG. 8. Southern Negroes. Suspended.

[Description: Pregnant woman hangs by her hands from a tree branch. Black and white illustration.]

The Siamese, who use massage freely, are usually delivered in the dorsal decubitus; but in difficult cases, when even tramping upon the abdomen is not attended with success, as a dernier ressort, they suspend the patient by means

of a band beneath the arms, and one, sometimes two, of the attendants then clasp with their arms the body of the parturient, and suspend themselves also; this expedient seldom fails to produce a rupture in some direction, be it the uterus, the perineum, or the encephalon of the child.