On the duration of labour as a cause of mortality and danger to the mother and infant; &c : in reply to a letter of Dr. Collins / by J.Y. Simpson.
- James Young Simpson
- Date:
- 1848
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On the duration of labour as a cause of mortality and danger to the mother and infant; &c : in reply to a letter of Dr. Collins / by J.Y. Simpson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.
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![]8 6. You say that, in my Memoir on Turning, I have ventured to condemn your practice/' I am certainly not aware tliat I have done so. But you unscrupulously ven- ture to condemn mine, and denounce the idea of turning in a case of contracted pelvic brim as dangerous, &c. &c. And you condemn it on grounds which show at once that you misunderstand it. You suppose and argue that I wish to substitute turning in all cases of deformity of the pelvis, where the crotchet and long forceps are at present used. I never entertained or expressed such an idea. Thus, you erroneously imagine that I would have turned the children in all the 79 cases in which you perforated their heads ; and you add, I shudder at the thought. I really do not see why we should shudder at the thought of saving some of their lives instead of destroy- ing them all. An old pupil of your own, your former able assistant physician at the Dublin Hospital, and my esteem- ed friend, Professor Murphy of London, met last Decem- ber with a case (see Lancet for Dec. 18, 1847), in which the pelvis was three inches in the conjugate diameter of the brim,—where the head remained above it,—where he commenced your method of practice, viz. perforating, but the instrument failed,—and where he subsequently deliver- ed the child alive by my method of practice, viz. turning; and I have quoted in my memoir several such instances. Would any man shudder at the thought of this child's life being saved by a new, when it was so nearly being sacrificed by an old, practice ? Your countrymen have just been earnestly petitioning, and properly so, for one adult Irishman who has forfeited his life to the civil law. And why shudder then, at the thought of me petitioning with equal earnestness, for the lives of some of the next young Irishmen that may (if the old obstetric law is not changed) be doomed betimes to have their heads opened, as formerly, by the perforator; and who, as yet, have committed neither crime nor treason of any kind. You](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21474886_0020.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
