Birth — Class 11 MCQs with Answers

Key concepts: Birth (Class 11 English)

An excerpt from A. J. Cronin's The Citadel. Andrew Manson, newly qualified and full of doubt, is called to a difficult birth and must choose in an instant between a collapsing mother and a stillborn child — then refuses to accept the loss.

The setting

Andrew Manson has just begun practice as assistant to Dr Edward Page in Blaenelly, a small Welsh mining town. Joe and Susan Morgan, married nearly twenty years, are expecting their first child.

The call

Near midnight Joe Morgan is waiting outside; they walk to Number 12 Blaina Terrace. Joe will not come in — 'But, man, I know ye'll do well for us.'

No premonition

'He had no premonition that this night call would prove unusual, still less that it would influence his whole future in Blaenelly.' The line sets up everything that follows.

The old woman's tea

Mrs Morgan's mother, nearly seventy, offers tea because she fears he will leave and return later. He reassures her: 'Don't fret, mother, I'll not run away.'

Andrew's doubt

By the kitchen fire he broods on failed marriages — Bramwell, Edward Page, Denny — against his own idealised hopes with Christine: 'the conflict between his level, doubting mind and his overflowing heart'.

Susan's instruction

'Susan said not to give her the chloroform if it would harm the baby. She's awful set upon this child.' She would accept her own suffering to protect the child.

The birth

Work begins at half-past three. 'It was a long, harsh struggle. Then, as the first streaks of dawn strayed past the broken edges of the blind, the child was born, lifeless.'

The dilemma

Torn between reviving the child and saving the mother, 'The dilemma was so urgent he did not solve it consciously. Blindly, instinctively, he gave the child to the nurse.'

Saving the mother

He smashes a glass ampule, injects the medicine and works 'unsparingly' until her heart strengthens — then asks, 'Where's the child?'

Asphyxia pallida

The child, found beneath the bed among sodden newspapers, is white 'as tallow'. The whiteness means asphyxia pallida, and he recalls a case he once saw in the Samaritan.

The resuscitation

Hot and cold basins, the child hurried between them 'like some crazy juggler', with a special method of respiration — fifteen minutes, then half an hour, with no breath at all.

The first heave

'The pigmy chest, which his hands enclosed, gave a short, convulsive heave, another… and another…' Then a joyful iridescent bubble of mucus, the skin turning pink, and the child's cry.