On the history and use of the short straight midwifery forceps as a tractor, and of the long double curved forceps as a compressor and lever / by Thomas More Madden.

Date:
[1875?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the history and use of the short straight midwifery forceps as a tractor, and of the long double curved forceps as a compressor and lever / by Thomas More Madden. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    as I would any other of a more normal conformation of body, there came shortly afterwards an English physician named Chamberlen, who was then in Paris, and who, from father to son, made a profession of midwifery in England, in the town of London, where he thus acquired the highest reputation in that art. This physician finding the woman in the condition just stated, and learning that I had not found any possibility of delivering her, declared himself astonished that I could not do so. Moy (says Mauriceau, with all a Frenchman’s untranslatable vanity), qu’il disoit assuroit estre le plus habile homme de ma profession qui fort a Paris; notwithstanding which he at once promised to deliver her most assuredly in less than half a quarter of an hour, whatever difficulty he might find. Accordingly, he immediately applied himself to the business, and in place of half a quarter of an hour, he worked for more than three entire hours without cessation, except to take breath. But having vainly exerted all his strength, as well as all his industry, and seeing that the poor woman was almost dead in his hands, he was obliged to abandon the attempt and to allow that he could not accomplish it, as I had well declared. This poor woman died undelivered twenty- four hours after the violence he had done her, and at the examination 1 made in performing after her death the Ctesarean operation, which I would not do before, as I have said, I found the child and everything else as I had before stated, and the womb all torn and pierced through in several places by the instruments which this physician had blindly used without the controul of his hand, which being a size larger than mine, he did not seem to have been able to introduce sufficiently far so as to preserve it.’’ Mauriceau then goes on with great complacency to observe that the English physician, who had come six months previously to Paris in the hope of making his fortune, had circulated a report that he had a secret (tout purticulier) for such cases, and vaunted that he could thus deliver in even the most desperate and otherwise hopeless cases in less than half a quarter of an hour, and had even proposed to the First Physician to the King that for a reward of ten thousand crowns he would disclose his pretended secret. “ Mais le seule experience de ce facheux accouchement le degouta tellement de ce pais-ci, qu’il s’en retourna peu de jours en suite au Angleterre ; voyant bien qu’il y a Paris de plus habile gens en l’art des accouchemens que lui.” But before leaving Paris Chamberlen called on Mauriceau, and after various compli- ments had passed between them, the latter thus concludes his account of