Crocodile Dung and Twilight Sleep

How have we survived as a species? I don't just mean in the sense that we've been awful forever, but how we actually come into this world. Childbirth was the most dangerous and harrowing thing in women's lives. From pasting the dung of dangerous creatures on ourselves, using tortoise shells condoms, to drugging women into a thrashing screaming state during labour and doctors walking around with a diseased womb in their pocket, the miracle of childbirth, it seems, is it's a miracle women didn't' decide to stop ever having children ever again.

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