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

  • Robert Barnes
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Obstetric operations : including the treatment of hmorrhage / 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.

    39/504 (page 25)
    The Syringe^ Uterine Tube, and Caoutchouc Dilators.—■ These are perhaps the most frequently useful of all the instru- ments enumerated. A Higginson's syi-inge [Davidson's syringe is better known in the United States] is fitted with a mount, to which the flexible uterine tube or any one of my dilators can be adapted. Three sizes of the dilators are suffi- cient. They are now in extensive use at home and abroad. The elastic male bougies are useful as the best means of inducing labor—that is, of provoking labor and the prepara- tory stage. The jpoTCupine-quill is the most convenient instrument for piercing the membranes; and, although a common pin or a steel pen will answer the purpose, these are not always at hand. The special instruments, as stilets, etc., are really superfluous. [The sharpened nail of the operator's finger often answers as well as any thing.] The remaining instruments require no special description. And, lastly, let me add a few w^ords concerning the ob- stetric hand, as the master-instrument of all, not only as guiding all the rest, but as performing many most impor- tant operations unarmed. In ordinary labor it is the only instrument required. It is also the only instrument called for in many of the greatest difficulties. In malpresentations, in placenta prsevia, in many cases of contracted pelvis, in not a few cases where, after perforation, the crotchet and craniot- omy forceps have failed to deliver, the bare hand aflibrds a safe and ready extrication. One cannot help seeing that practice is often determined by the accidental perfection of or familiarity with particular instruments. Thus, a man who has only reached that stage of obstetric develo23ment which is content with a short forceps will be armed with a good perforator and crotchet. He cannot fail to acquire skill and confidence in embryotomy, and greatly to restrict the application of the forceps. Again, the preference generally given on the Continent to cephalotripsy over craniotomy and extraction by the crotchet or craniotomy forceps is the result