[Pageheader: PRACTICES OF THE GILBERT ISLANDS]
As the Gilbert Islanders are credited with being excessively prolific, and are said to be the only race in the South Seas that would increase if artificial means were not used to prevent the population exceeding the capacity of the islands, it will be well to compare their methods of midwifery as described by Tearabugu, a professional midwife. On her island--Tamana--much attention is paid to pregnant women. They do no work during the first two months of pregnancy. At the seventh month they are anointed with oil; about the eighth their limbs are given passive exercise, and they go to a separate house to be shampooed by expert masseuses, in order to train their muscles to bear the labour pains. The umbilical cord is measured to the middle of the child's forehead, and cut, but not tied. The placenta is extracted by hand if it does not come away naturally. In cases of mal-presentation the midwives know how to give assistance. The mother does no work during suckling, and, if it is necessary to wean the child prematurely, a substitute for the mother's milk is found in a butter made from the fresh fruit of the pandanus. The midwives are reputed to be exceptionally clever, and the labours easy and safe. Tearabugu could not remember a single case which had terminated fatally for the mother. She said that four or five children are considered enough, and any above that number are not allowed to come to maturity. All the women practise abortion because they are so prolific. If they did not they would have from ten to twenty children apiece. But neither medicine nor instruments are used. The common method is to pound the abdomen with a billet of wood, and this is not fatal to the mother. Now, however, the practice is being abandoned, because the missionaries have persuaded the people that it is dangerous.
The Fijian child begins life with a dose of medicine. As soon as it has been washed in cold water a little of the juice of the candle-nut-tree (_Aleurites triloba_) is put into its mouth to make it vomit. Then a ripe cocoanut, or in some places a plantain, is roasted and chewed into a pulp, which is dropped into a cocoanut-shell cup. A piece of bark-cloth, shaped like a nipple, is dipped into this, and given to the child to suck. The mother's first milk, being considered unwholesome, is drawn off, and for the first day, or, in the case of a chief's child, for the first three days, the baby is put to the breasts of a wet nurse, if its rank is sufficient to command her services. The wet nurse is strictly forbidden to bathe or fish in salt water, and there must not be too great a disparity of age between her own and her foster child. When the mother's breasts are full, her child is given to her to suckle, but now, as in the old days, the children of chiefs are suckled by more than one woman. In Tonga the mother suckles her child as soon as the milk comes.