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.

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    we pass beyond these limits, we run into danger of injuring the mother and of losing the child. ITow, the great contest in all matters of strife is about boundary-lines; and it is concerning these limits that authorities have differed. Some men are afraid of giving power, lest it should be abused. They are so terrified at the possible mischief which great power may work, that they would rather abandon the good which great power is equally capable of working. They tremble lest we should be unable to acquire the skill and the discretion necessary to direct that greater power. Such men virtually say, you shall not apply the forceps where the head has not descended into the pelvic cavity—an arbitrary limit dictated by fear, and fixed by ignorance that the for- ceps is just as capable of safely delivering a child whose head is arrested at the brim. For here, as is continually the case in medicine, exjDerience arbitrarily limited excludes prog- ress in knowledge and bars improvement in practice. For example, how can a man acquire a just knowledge of the power of the forceps to deliver a head delayed by slight dis- proportion at the brim, if he always delivers under this diffi- culty by perforating ? Clearly, he bars himself from acquir- ing that knowledge; and, giving up his intelligence to the delusive dictates of his wilfully limited experience, he re- fuses even to accept the evidence of those whose experience is greater, because it is directed by a freer spirit of research, by greater confidence in the resources of art. [Dr. Churchill gives the following as the statistics of the frequency of the use of the forceps, among the British, French, and German physicians: Among the British we find 594 forceps cases in 147,645 cases of labor, or about one in 249. Among the French, 339 cases in 47,475 labor cases, or about one in 140. And among the Germans, 7,074 cases in 755,593 cases, or about one in 106|-. If we add the whole together we find 8,007 forceps cases in 850,713 cases of labor, or one in 106|-.] * ' ClmrchilVs System of Midwifery. American edition, pp. 339, 340.