In the past, Mao Pao was ferried across the river [in time of danger] because earlier he had set free a tortoise,⁵ and the marquis of Sui received a pearl because he had saved a snake.⁶ …⁶ Sui was a principality (in Sui County in modern Hupeh Province) in the Warring States period. The marquis of Sui once saved a wounded snake. In return, the snake searched for a large pearl in the river and gave it to the marquis.

After breakfast it takes a stout heart and strong nerve to tackle the burden of dishwashing, separator, milk things, disorderly house, interspersed with quarrels, naggings, and interruptions of the children […]

THE Iſland of Formoſa is about Eighty Leagues in compaſs ; ſo that the Hollanders were never in poſſeſſion of the whole Iſland, but were onely Maſters of four Fortreſſes, and two and fifty Villages, wherein they could number about fourteen or fifteen thouſand Inhabitants.

Midwives are deliberately kept as subordinate members of the guild of surgeons, “to whose policing they must submit,” and have historically been deprived of a separate, recognized voice. There is “absolutely no community among them,” gloats the surgeon Louis in the Encyclopédie with obvious relief, reassuring himself and his readers, as if an independent consorority of these women would be a nightmare.