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(Continued from p. 243.)
Having Reference to the Employment of Anesthetics in
Cases of Labour.
By
the Rev. Abraham De Sola, Lecturer on Hebrew
Language and Literature, University of M’Gill
College.
The great length to which we have already extended
our observations forbids our enlarging more on this
subject, yet, before concluding, we would make one
or two remarks to show that even if we have failed
to prove the English version incorrect in its
expression, “in sorrow shalt thou bring forth,” and
that the employment of anaesthetics in cases of
labour is a good, a proper, and a scriptural
practice; still, cannot such practice be opposed on
scriptural grounds, because we cannot understand the
denunciations against the woman, literally, without
also receiving, as literal, those against the man,
the ground, and the serpent.
We
will not stop to consider here the sentence of the
serpent, but in respect to that of the man, we read,
“In sorrow shalt thou eat of it (the ground)
all the days of thy life.” According to the
literal import of this passage, they who eat of the
various productions of the earth, without having
experienced “sorrow” in procuring them, and they who
cultivate their fields, using cattle to the plough,
or, indeed, employing any machine which shall enable
them to eat of these productions without “sorrow,”
are transgressors against the words of Scripture.
“Thorns also and thistles it shall bring forth to
thee.” They, then, who labour so hard to
exterminate these from their fields and gardens, act
sinfully, since the literal text says, they shall
be, and such persons strive that they shall not be.
“And thou shalt eat the herb of the field.”
If the denunciations against the sinners in the
affair of the forbidden tree were to be immutably
and permanently entailed on the human race, and
they were not to be more so on woman than on man,
how is it that we find this sentence afterwards
changed and animals permitted to man for food?
“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.”
This applies as much to man, in the present day, as
does the sentence of Eve, to woman, in the present
day. He, therefore, who does not earn his daily
bread by infinite bodily toil, for such, it is
generally admitted, the expressive metaphor of
Scripture means,—the man who, instead of toiling for
his daily <<314>>food, lives without labour on those
ample means with which parent or a friend may have
presented him, is a sinner against the declarations
of Scripture, although he may be exceedingly
upright, charitable, and religious in every other
respect.
“For dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou
return.” Then there is no immortality for us,
for man, as a punishment, is to return to dust
whence he was originally taken. This passage, too,
might be made to show the sinfulness of the practice
of the healing art itself, since the Scriptures
teach, man “shall return to the dust,” i. e.
die, and physicians try to make him live. But this
insisting on the literal character of the divine
denunciations against woman, in consequence of Eve’s
disobedience, produces numberless other
inconsistencies. Thus Adam ought to have died on the
same day that he partook of the forbidden tree,
because God announced to him, “For on the day
that thou eatest of it thou shalt surely die,” and
yet Adam lived long after he eat of the tree. And
so, also, Eve committed no sin in eating of the
tree, and ought not to have been punished for so
doing, because (according to the Scriptures), the
prohibition of God was addressed to Adam alone, even
before Eve was made, and yet, woman is always to
“bring forth children in sorrow.”
If
then, an accoucheur, who maintained the literal of
this “sorrow,” were to attend one of those patients
who “from their more natural mode of life,” and “the
greater purity of the atmosphere and food” to which
they are accustomed, suffered little or no
inconvenience from labour, as is almost generally
“the case with the Indian women of South America,”*
the squaw of Canada, and many black tribes, that
accoucheur would be bound, if desirous of duly
carrying out the strict letter of the law, to use
such means that the labour should indeed be one of
“sorrow.” A black, no more than a white woman, has a
right to be exempt from a curse universally and
immutably entailed on the sex.
Again, “He (Eve’s husband) shall rule over her.” No
doubt weak-minded husbands may find it convenient to
quote this text in its most literal acceptation to
their wives as some apology for their tyranny; but
few duly impressed with the dignity of the sex would
venture hereby to assume undue authority. Nor will
women be deterred hereby from vindicating her just
rights;† but <<315>>this cannot be the case with
those who clamour for the literal letter of the law.
We may not, however, pursue this subject farther.
But the instances already adduced, suffices to show
what inconsistency and impropriety there is in the
opinion that the word “sorrow” of the denunciation
against the woman is literally to be accomplished on
the sex in the present day, and that to prevent in
any way this accomplishment is both unscriptural and
irreligious.
(To be continued.) |
