Obstetrics : the science and the art / by Charles D. Meigs.

  • Meigs, Charles D. (Charles Delucena), 1792-1869.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Obstetrics : the science and the art / by Charles D. Meigs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    Fig. 3. pelvis into a greater one above and a lesser one below, for it is evident that the lower portion of the drawing represents a form or a cavity very different from the broad and expanded portion above. Fig. 3 shows the front segment of this same divided pelvis, and exhibits the shape of the front inner wall of the true or lower pelvis. If the two segments should be readjusted, they would reproduce the pelvis of Fig. 1. These two figures ought to instruct the student as to the real canal of the pelvis, and show him that if any difficulties should arise in the course of a labor, on account of the bony canal, those difficulties would be connected with this true, or lower or lesser basin, and not with the great or su- perior basin, which is so capacious that ob- struction could hardly arise within its walls. Hence he ought to care- fully study the confor- mation and properties of this lower basin, if he would make himself equal to the responsibilities of obstetrical practice. 7. As the sacral bone has its sacro-lumbar facette cut so obliquely that the sacrum descends in a backward as well as downward direc- tion, producing the projection, promontory of the sac- rum, or sacro-vertebral angle, the entrance or inlet of the pelvis is rendered, by the promontory, narrower from front to rear than it is when measured either transversely or obliquely, this sharp angle of the promontory being the posterior limit of the brim. From the promontory there is a sort of raised line or ledge running round the pelvis, left and right, to stop at the top of the ossa pubis (Fig. 1), and because this raised line runs along both the ilium and the pubis, it is called the ilio-pubal line, or ilio-pectineal line. The Komans called the pubic region pecten, hence linea ilio-pec- tinea; for, as the pudenda is clothed with hair, the term pecten was applied to that region, and the bone of the pubis has been called the os pectinis. Juvenal speaks of the pecten in Sat. vi. 370. Inguina traduntur medicis jam p e c t i n e nigro. 8. Now this linea ilio-pectinea serves as a sort of stricturing band, to make the pelvis small at the inlet and produce a narrowing there.