Caesarean Section

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume X, Issue 4, 1 October 1917, Page 221

Caesarean Section

The following interesting case is extracted from the l ' Medical Essays of Edinburgh," Vol. V., and cited m Smellie's " Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Midwifery," published m 1784. The Caesarian operation was performed with forceps by a midwife, and described by Mr. Duncan Stewart, Surgeon m Pungannon, m the County of Tyrone, Ireland. " The histories of the Caesarian operation being so few, I send you the following : — Alice O'Neale, aged about 33 yeais, wife to a poor farmer near Charlemont, and mother to several children, m January, 1738, was taken m labour, but could, not be delivered of her child by several women who attempted it. She remained m this condition twelve days ; the child was thought to be dead after the third &&y. Mary Donelly, an illiterate woman, but eminent among the common people for extracting dead births, being then called, tried also to deliver her m the common way, and her attempts not succeeding, pei formed the C sßsarian operating b y cutting with a razor, first the containing paits of the abdomen, and then the uterus, at the aperture of which she took out the child and secundines. The upper part of the incision was an inch higher, and to one side of the navel, and was continued downwards, m

the middle b etwixt the right os ilium and the linea alba. She held the lips of the incision together with her hand till one went a mile and returned with silk and the common needles which tailors use. With these she joined the lips m the manner of the stitch employed ordinarily for the harelip, and dressed the wound with whites of eggs, as she told me some days after, when led by curiosity I visited the poor woman who had undergone the operation. The cure was completed with salves of the midwife's own compounding. "In about 27 days the patient was able to walk a mile on foot, and came to me m a farmer's house, where she showed me the wound covered with a cicatrix ; but she complained of her belly hanging outwards on the right side, where I observed a tumour as large as a child's head ; and she was distressed with a flu or albus, for which I gave her some medicines, and advised her to drink concoctions of the vulnerary plants, and to support the side of her belly with a bandage. The patient has enjoyed very good health ever since, manages her family affairs, and has frequently walked to market m this town, which is six miles distant from her own house." (From, the New Zealand Medical Journal.)