USE OF THE FORCEPS. 469 



SECTION 2. 



Of the Use of the Forcejis. 



1. The cases that require the employment of the forceps are nu- 

 merous, and may be divided into two classes: in tlie one, no other 

 means except the forceps can be had recourse to; in the other, it 

 would, strictly speaking, be possible to have recourse to turning, or 

 to rely upon some other means of succor, should it be desirable to 

 avoid applying the forceps. Antecedently to the invention of this 

 instrument, all those labors, that could not be terminated by the hand 

 alone, were treated by embryotomy, or by some serious operation 

 upon the mother; at present we are rarely reduced to the necessity 

 of thus sacrificing the child, and of equally compromitting the safety 

 of the mother, because the forceps generally suffices to obviate this 

 destructive practice. 



1054. It has been laid down as a general rule that the forceps 

 must be applied, 1. Whenever the head is too large, either relatively, 

 or absolutely, to pass through the passages without exposing the 

 woman to the hazard of exhaustion, or other dangers; 2. When the 

 womb is in a state of inertia, and efforts to restore its contractility 

 prove to be in vain, and the head is found to be so far engaged that 

 it is impossible to restore it to the superior strait; 3. When any 

 accident renders the extraction of the fcetus indispensable, and the 

 head has already descended into the excavation. 



1055. Too large a head. If, as is already proved by the experi- 

 ments of Baudelocque, and some other authors, the head of a new 

 born child, when squeezed so as to bend a forceps of the best con- 

 struction, is reduced in diameter not more than three or four lines 

 at the utmost, it is evident that when taken hold of within the pelvis, 

 where it is already more or less compressed in various directions, it 

 would not be prudent to depend upon any greater degree of re- 

 duction; and besides, to obtain a reduction to that amount, it would 

 be necessary for the instrument to be applied exactly to the two ex- 

 tremes of the bi-parietal diameter. But when we come to reflect 

 upon the difficulty of fixing the blades exactly upon the points de- 

 sired, and that each of them are a line and a half in thickness, it is 

 difficult to believe that a head too large to pass through the pelvis 

 under the influence of the powerful contractions of the womb and 

 the well directed eff'orts of the woman, could derive any great assis- 

 tance from the application of the forceps. 



1056. Weakness of the organism. Inertia, or want of contrac- 

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