An aside on this:
Although
"deadening of pain through potions [potlatch] was known to most ancient civilizations," yet
"[d]uring all this time, there was no tradition of using painkiller to relieve the pain of women going though labor. Women midwives could be accused of witchcraft if they employed such drugs. One such case occurred in 1591, when [s]he was condemned as a witch and burned alive at the Castle Hill of Edinburgh."
It was not until 1846, that ether was successfully administered as an anesthetic during an operation. In 1847, Dr. James Y. Simpson, professor of obstetrics at the University of Glasgow successfully used chloroform to relieve the suffering of a woman patient in childbirth. [ellipses omitted]
Major controversy followed. The clergy (male) insisted that painkilling in childbirth violated God's judgment as He drove Eve from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:16: "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children"). Many women (mostly past their childbearing years) argued that without the pain of delivery, a new mother would not properly bond with her baby.
Eventually, Queen Victoria announced that she wanted chloroform for her childbirth. This effectively ended any question of the propriety of the new-fangled practice.
http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/DOCTOR.TXT; scroll about 2/3 of the way down to section on
Discovery of Painkiller, and Religious Opposition to "Painless" Labor
