Obstetric operations, including the treatment of haemorrhage / by Robert Barnes ... with additions by Benjamin F. Dawson.

  • Robert Barnes
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Obstetric operations, including the treatment of haemorrhage / by Robert Barnes ... with additions by Benjamin F. Dawson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    48/580 page 20
    that is, that we may diminish some of its diameters by length- ening others—is easily proved. Firstly. It is known that in normal pelves the head in pass- ing, if the labour be protracted, undergoes elongation; from round it becomes conical; the greatest transverse diameter—the interparietal—^becomes merged in the lesser or interauricular, whilst the longitudinal diameters are correspondingly increased. These changes I have demonstrated by actual measurements and outlines.* Diagrams 1 and 2 may be taken as types of the normal head and of the form impressed in protracted labour. Thus, just as the pressure of the soft parts and the pelvis is a main agent in fixing the forceps u]oon the head, so it is in moulding the head to allow of its passing. Indeed, I think this pressure almost entirely accounts for the alteration of form Fig. 2. HEAD MOULDED BY PROTRACTED LABOUR. the head undergoes when the English forceps is applied. I can show outhnes of heads as strongly altered under the natural forces of labom* as they often are under forceps delivery, Secondly. Numerous experiments have been made with strong forceps upon dead children to determine this point. Baudelocque found that he could lessen the transverse diameter by a quarter * Obstetrical Transactions, vol. vii.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3