A manual of midwifery / by Alfred Lewis Galabin.

  • Galabin, Alfred Lewis, 1843-1913.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of midwifery / by Alfred Lewis Galabin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    authors, either recommended as a general rule, or altogether denounced. On some theoretical points also, the mode of explanation will be found to be original. Among these are the mode of demon- strating how flexion of the foetal head is produced by the pressure of the girdle of contact (Fig. 81, p. 174) ; the account of the opposite modes, as regards flexion and extension, in which the fcetal head may pass the brim of a flattened pelvis ; the proof that correct axis traction may be exercised by ordinary long-curved forceps (Fig. 213, p. 620) ; the account of the leverage action of forceps ; and the explanation of the lateral obliquity of the foetal head. The section of the pelvis, parallel to the plane of the brim, and passing through its points of support on the heads of the femora (Fig. 13, p. 12), has not, so far as I know, been hitherto figured in Obstetric works. It appears to me to afford the best means of studying the effects of the body-weight, and the reac- tions to the body-weight, on the shape of the brim, both in normal and deformed pelves. For it is only the components of the various forces resolved in the plane of the brim, or parallel to that plane, which directly influence the shape of the brim, or of parallel sections of the pelvis. In the account of the mechanism of labour, both in the normal and flattened pelvis, I have endeavoured to make the description of the subsidiary movements of the foetal head and their causation as simple as possible, and, at the same time, mechanically and geometrically sound. Special attention has been given to the mode of production of the different forms of distorted pelvis ; and also to the changes in the normal pelvis during the advance from infancy to maturity, since a correct interpretation of these goes far towards explaining the produc- tion of all deformities. I have tried to show that all the impor- tant peculiarities of shape in all the different forms of pelvis may be explained by the modified action of a few simple mechanical influences which act upon all pelves, whether normal or de- formed. I have adopted a classification of deformed pelves different from that usually followed, and have divided the various kinds of deformity, not according to their causation,