Memoir on the sex of the child as a cause of difficulty and danger in human parturition / by J.Y. Simpson.

  • Simpson, James Young, 1811-1870.
Date:
[1844]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoir on the sex of the child as a cause of difficulty and danger in human parturition / by J.Y. Simpson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    49/62 (page 43)
    with the accuracy required ; many of these patients only entering the hospital a few minutes before delivery. About half of the labours in the Dublin Hospital appear to have been terminated within the first two or three hours,* so that our Edinburgh register, as wanting that proportion of the more rapid cases, cannot show the average length of the process in ordinary instances. The records, how¬ ever, which it contains of the cases protracted beyond the period mentioned have, I know, been kept with adequate care,f* and seem capable of furnishing us with sound and unprejudiced evidence upon the present topic, inasmuch as they were originally noted without any view to such an inquiry as this into the comparative duration of male and female births. In analyzing the register I find, that, from 1836 to 1841 inclusive, 249 male and 178 female births are entered, with notes of the precise length of the labour in each. The following table will show the absolute and average duration of the labours with male and female children in these 427 cases. Labours. Absolute duration of the whole cases. Average duration of each labour. With male children, [249 in number,] With female child¬ ren, [178 in num¬ ber,] Honrs. Minutes. 2646 33 1702 29 Hours. Minutes. 10 38 9 34 Average greater length of the male birth, 1 4 In those classes of labour in which the process becomes morbid from tediousness or other complications and difficulties of a more serious character, the difference between the duration of the male and female births would seem to be even greater than the above table displays. At least such an inference appears deducible from the analysis which I have made, from Dr Collins’ tables, of the comparative length of the male and female births in the records which he has given of 407 still-born children, (including the pu¬ trid and premature), of 97 morbidly tedious labours, of 68 crotchet cases, and of 135 instances in which the mother died in connec¬ tion with delivery. The preceding numbers include all the cases under these several heads in which the exact duration of the la¬ bour is mentioned in Dr Collins’ tables. The result is this :— * * Of the 15,850 cases noted by Dr Collins, 7063 were terminated within two hours, and 9550 within three hours from their commencement. + A number of the entries were made by myself when annual pupil at the hospi¬ tal in 1836-7* and have been continued by others in that office.