466 THE FORCEPS. 



ARTICLE II. 

 Of the Forceps. 



SECTION 1. 



The Forceps in itself considered. 



1048. The forceps is an instrument with which the child, while 

 still within the organs of the mother, is seized and drawn forth. It 

 is not very precisely known who was the first inventor of this sort 

 of pincers, nor at what period it was first made mention of. It is 

 true that in the time of Avicenna certain blades with teeth in them 

 were made use of for the extraction of the dead foetus; Ruelf also 

 speaks of a pincers he made use of to extract the separate bones of 

 the cranium, but what comparison is there between these clumsy in- 

 struments, which no one would have ventured to apply to a living 

 child, and the forceps employed at the present day? 



1049. The Chamberlains were for a long time in possession of a 

 secret for terminating difficult labors. One of the members of that 

 family came to Paris for the pupose of convincing the French of the 

 value of his instrument; but as he was not successful in his first at- 

 tempts, and was ill satisfied with his reception in France, he return- 

 ed with his secret to London. Chapman and Gifl'ard, who pretend 

 to have been acquainted with the means employed by Chamberlain, 

 pubhshed a description of it at the commencement of the eighteenth 

 century, and asserted that it consisted of a forceps for taking hold of 

 the head with; a surgeon of Brentford, whose name was Drinkwater, 

 is also spoken of as the author of a similar forceps; but it is really 

 impossible to determine whether the Chamberlains made use of a 

 forceps or a lever, or some other instrument, nor whether the' hands, 

 which Palfyn says he first thought of, and the invention of which 

 was claimed by Ledoux, were any thing else than the instrument 

 used in England. 



1050. However this may be, it was about this time that the use of 

 the forceps was introduced into the practice of midwifery. At first, 

 formed of two blades, either full or fenestrated, which were intro- 

 duced separately into the pelvis, and which were but slightly curved, 

 they soon received the addition of a double notch, to admit of their 

 being crossed. Smellie made them an extremely simple instrument, 

 the application of which is as easy as possible; this accoucheur even 



