Dr. Conquest's outlines of midwifery : intended as a text-book for students, and a book of reference for junior practitioners.

  • Conquest, Dr.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. Conquest's outlines of midwifery : intended as a text-book for students, and a book of reference for junior practitioners. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    193/370 (page 179)
    The late Dr. D. Davis invented a strong sjDecies of bone-forceps, termed an Osteotomist, for the purpose of removing, piecemeal, every portion of the cranium, and thus obviating the necessity for the Ca3sarian section. M. Baudelocque has also contrived, for a similar purpose, a crushing machine worked with a screw, to which he has given the name of Cej)halo- tribe. As these two instruments have not been gene- rally sanctioned by the profession, it would be out of place to give other than a brief notice of them in an elementary work of this description. Turning has been strongly advocated as a substitute for craniotomy by Professor Simpson. Although this operation might in a very few instances be suc- cessful, a very little consideration will show its inex- pediency. 1st, The powerful traction, required in a deformed pelvis, might separate the neck from the head. 2ndly, If the head be too large to pass after the shoulders are born, craniotomy must be performed at a disadvantage, and nothing is gained. 3rdly, The pressure on the funis, during the inevitably protracted delivery by turning in a narrow pelvis, must be equally fatal to the child as craniotomy.—J. M. W.] OF THE CiESAPJAN OPERATION. This operation consists in making an incision through the parietes of the abdomen and uterus, sufficiently large to admit of the introduction of the hand, and of the extraction of the foetus and placenta.