Two memoirs on the Cesarean operation / Translated from the French, with a preface, notes, an appendix and six engravings, by John Hull.

Jean-Louis Baudelocque

Date:: 1801

Credit: Two memoirs on the Cesarean operation / Translated from the French, with a preface, notes, an appendix and six engravings, by John Hull. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$At the same time, that the parietal bones ride over one another by their upper margin, they also advance over the occipital and fron- tal bones, which appear to be sunk beneath them, so that the cranium is diminished both in its length and thickness at the same time. If the diameter of the skull still exceed that of the pelvis, as the bones cannot be forced to project further over one another, one of the parietal bones is fractured and depressed* or, which is infinitely more uncommon, it is * depressed without being fractured; and then new disorders are added to those of the ob- struction of the brain and the detachment of the pericranium and dura mater, and the child dies in the womb of its mother. All these derangements have been detected by an ana- tomical inspection of the children. The following considerations are much more important and conclusive. That the head of the foetus may be moulded in this manner to the contracted canal, through which it has to pass, it must enter and ad- vance like a wedge; which supposes this canal to possess a width, that is not met with in all deformed pelves. Hitherto no well authenticated observation has demonstrated the possibility of delivery, where the pelvis$