Division of the funis during forceps delivery / by Jno. S. Coleman.

  • Coleman, John S.
Date:
[1888]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Division of the funis during forceps delivery / by Jno. S. Coleman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [Reprinted from the American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children, Vol. XXI., July, 1888.] *—N DIVISION OF THE FUNIS DURING FORCEPS DELIVERY. BY JNO. S. COT.EMAN, M.D., Augusta, Ga. In the afternoon of January 27th, 1882, I was called by Dr. W. W. Battey, of Richmond Co., to see a patient with him. The woman, anegress, Illpara, had been in labor for forty-eight hours in the hands of an ignorant midwife. Upon making an examination, 1 found the head engaged in the superior strait L. 0. A., and the left foot projecting into the brim slightly beyond the ankle. Also a firm hard tumor, feeling like an exostosis, pyriform and apparently about the size of an English walnut, in the median line and just below the promon- tory of the sacrum. I exerted all warrantable force in the attempt to push up first the head and then the foot, but could not dislodge either. I now placed the patient in the genu-pectoral position, and with great difficulty succeeded in forcing the foot above the superior strait. Her position was changed to the dorsal decubitus and Barnes’ forceps applied. The locking of the blades required considerable effort, due, as I then thought, to the impingement of the second blade against the tumor. The delivery was accomplished with ease and with- out damage to the perineum. Dr. Battey firmly compressed the uterus after Crede. A teaspoonful of Squibb’s fl. ext. ergot was ' administered. The child, a male, was still-born, was poor in flesh but of large frame. Sprinkling with cold water, and artificial res- piration steadily continued for some moments, caused him to breathe regularly. The child all this time was upon his right side, and removed from his mother far enough to escape being drowned in the pool of amniotic liquor and blood. I am never in a hurry to sever the umbilical cord, and there- fore rested from the fatigue of my constrained position. My surprise cjm better be imagined than described, when, upon taking hold of the cord, I found it severed, crushed squarely off, within two inches of umbilicus, and oozing slightly. To this oversight, with consequent loss of blood, I must attribute the death of the child some six hours afterwards. But how did the accident happen ? In my opinion, the cord was caught between the edge of the second blade of the forceps and the tumor, in the final adjustment. And yet, to accept this theory, how completely doubled up must the child have