What does “fought out the point” mean?

Question

Now, if, during this brief period, Oliver had been surrounded by careful grandmothers, anxious aunts, experienced nurses, and doctors of profound wisdom, he would most inevitably and indubitably have been killed in no time. There being nobody by, however, but a pauper old woman, who was rendered rather misty by an unwonted allowance of beer; and a parish surgeon who did such matters by contract; Oliver and Nature fought out the point between them. The result was, that, after a few struggles, Oliver breathed, sneezed, and proceeded to advertise to the inmates of the workhouse the fact of a new burden having been imposed upon the parish, by setting up as loud a cry as could reasonably have been expected from a male infant who had not been possessed of that very useful appendage, a voice, for a much longer space of time than three minutes and a quarter.

Hi. What does “fought out the point” mean?

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary is pretty good for this sort of thing ( https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fight-it-out#dataset-cacd ). They have "fight it out" under "fight" as "to argue until a decision is reached between two people or groups", not the most complete definition, to be sure. Their definitions are often a bit off-center, but they cover a lot of idiomatic expressions and turns of phrase.

Oliver is being born. His birth was left to happen naturally, with no midwife or active doctor assisting, fortunately. The "point" was whether he would survive the process. Oliver had to "argue" with "Nature", the natural world personified (Dickens is being very tongue-in-cheek, invoking an ancient mode of superstition), over his existence, and he won.

What does “fought out the point” mean?

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