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

  • James Young Simpson
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.

    7/62
    ON THE SEX OF THE CHILD AS A CAUSE OF DIFFICULTY AND DANGER IN HUMAN PARTURITION. My object in the following observations is to show, that the Sex of the child has a very marked and demonstrable influence upon the difficulties and dangers of human parturition, in relation to the fate both of the mother and of the infant. Two winters ago I had occasion to undertake some investiga¬ tions into the causes of the difficulties attendant upon parturition in the white, as compared with the black tribes of mankind; and in the human female, as compared with the female of the lower animals. In consequence of these investigations I was led to con¬ clude that the adaptation of the head of the foetus to the maternal canals is so very close and accurate in the process of parturition as it occurs in the female of our own race, that deviations of a very slight degree in the relative size of the cranium of the child, and of the pelvic passages of the mother, should, when viewed on the large scale, lead to differences of a very appreciable and not¬ able extent in the relative safety or danger of the whole process. On further considering the subject it appeared to me, that in the slight difference which is known to exist between the size of the heads of the male and female child at birth, and in the effects which this difference might or might not be traced to produce A