CESAREAN OPERATION (au/4—mm) has, from very ancient times, been the popu lar name for hysterotomy (Ilystera, uterus; tome, section). Pliny alludes to it in his Natural History (lib. vii. cap. ix.), saying that Ctesar was so called from being taken by excision out of the womb of his mother, and that such persons were called Casones (Caesar a coeso matris utero dictus; qua de causa Cauones appellati). In his case, the mother must have survived the operation, as Aurelia was alive when her son invaded Britain.
The pages of a popular work s carcely allow of the details of such a proceeding, but we may state that the first incision is made exactly in the middle line of the body, to the length of 0 or 7 inches. When the uterus is exposed, it must be carefully opened, the child lifted out, and then the after-birth. The uterus now'contracts, and sinks down into the pelvis, the wound is closed, and opium is given to the patient to allay pain and nervous irritability.
In Great Britain, the C. 0. has been rarely performed, most likely from the skill of the accoucheurs rendering such a proceeding unnecessary; but still several cases are on record where not only the child, but the mother, was saved. Some women, indeed, seem to have accepted it as their usual method of delivery, having several children, each requiring to be removed through an abdominal incision; one woman submitted to it seven times. It has also been successfully performed in most unfavorable circumstances.
In the year 1500. a sow-gelder operated successfully on his own wife; an illiterate Irish midwife, Mary Donally, operated with a razor on a poor farmer's wife in .Tan., 1738, and removed a dead child; her patient completely recovered, so as to be able to walk a mile on foot on the 27th day after the operation. Nay, a negro woman in Jamaica cut herself open with a butcher's knife, removed her infant, and recovered. Practitioners are not quite decided as to the circumstances which justify the performance of this severe operation on the living female, but all agree on the propriety of at once removing by it the child of a recently dead woman. Numa Pompilins decreed that every preg nant woman who died should be opened; and the senate of Venice, in 1608, decreed that practitioners should perform, under heavy penalties, the C. 0. on pregnant women supposed to be dead. Iii 1749, the king of Sicily decreed the punishment of death to medical men who omitted to perform it on women dying when advanced in pregnancy. Of course, to be of any use, it must be performed immediately.