PAINLESS CHILDBIRTH

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27131, 29 August 1953, Page 3

PAINLESS CHILDBIRTH

Sir, —For years I have contended that the missing links between science and religion will be given primarily through medical science. The news regarding painless childbirth supports me. Dr. MacMillan says, “Fear of childbirth undoubtedly was a factor in e the pain suffered by women in childbirth.’’ • Compare what he says with Job’s “For the thing which I greatly feared has come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.” There are hundreds of references to the ill-effects of the instinct of fear in the Biblical record. Its shortest verse is “Jesus wept.” Is it any wonder?—This man, strong through the evolutionary process, incarnated to teach man the power of the mind? His tears were for the Egyptian darkness into which man had sunk through letting instinct triumph over reason. But we need not despair. Medical science comes to man's rescue and explains the truth.—Yours, etc., M. G. DAVIES. August 28, 1953.

Sir, —I agree with “Thought Psychology’’ that we . are only on the fringe of the great power of thought, but for no other reason than the limitations we have ourselves put on this great power within. • To speak of hypnotism as belonging to a low grade of thought: is not this rather a misinterpretation of its true design and thinking of this useful mediation in the bombastic sense of the burlesque? ■Any power or act allowed to go unharnessed can become an atrocity and procreate degeneration. As a layman, I believe that under correct supervision, through the acquisition of selfhypnotism, we can realise the thought level that the law-giver of life did intend.—Yours, etc., I BELIEVE. August 28, 1953.