Tārīkh-i pizishkī i.e., Medical History

Abstract

Childbirth means the complete removal of placenta and fetus from the uterus to the outside of the mother's body. Natural childbirth process is usually very difficult and painful, and this causes pregnant mothers and delivery teams to tend to avoid this process, and to be attracted to Cesarean delivery. Complications of Cesarean delivery are twice more than natural delivery, and in addition, it imposes a lot of expense to the treatment section. If a method could be found to make the natural delivery easier and acceptable, its popularity can be increased. Unfortunately, due to the lack of exact specification of childbirth physiology and its effective factors, their facilitation and expedition procedures are also limited. In Iranian traditional medicine, many medical substances which are effective on childbirth are mentioned; this study introduces some of them. This research is a library study, and is based on a literature review.

In this study medical substances which are effective on facilitating the childbirth are searched in four traditional medicine pharmacology reference books (The Canon of Medicine, Ekhtiyarat Badi‘i, Tohfat-ul-Mo'menin, Makhzan-ul-Advia). This work was done in 7 steps (finding keywords, searching in the resources, preparing a single list, finding synonyms, conclusion, and scoring, and sorting according to the scores achieved), and 19 single-medicine medical substances were found which were being discussed in childbirth facilitating. All these obtained substances are herbal based. The highest scores achieved, belong to Aristolochia, Juniper, Chamomile, Ferula, and Hedera helix.  The list of medical substances (materia medica) achieved in this study, can be used as a base for conducting clinical studies to produce new medicines which are effective on delivery facilitating.