DEAD FCETUS. 503 



we have for a moment felt it to be without pulsation. It is only- 

 after having satisfied himself that the pulsation is entirely abolished 

 for several minutes, and equally during the presence and the absence 

 of the pains, below, as well as above the head, either free or com- 

 pressed, that the accoucheur is at liberty to pronounce without fear 

 upon the state of the foetus. To be still more certain, if the head 

 had not cleared the superior strait, I cannot see why the hand 

 might not be passed up more or less into the womb, so as to ascer- 

 tain whether the heart continues to beat, and to touch the umbilical 

 cord nearer its root, or at some point where it should be free from 

 all compression. 



1119. If then the combination of all these signs, or the chief of 

 them, were always to be met with where the child is dead, there 

 will rarely be any embarrassment in giving a decision; but they fail 

 so often when it is indispensable to proceed to action, when there is 

 no time for temporising, that it is easy to imagine how practitioners 

 have been led to the performance of serious and even mortal opera- 

 tions on the mother, although the child was actually dead; and that 

 at other times, the child has been cut to pieces while still full of life. 

 Hitherto, medical men have made only vain efforts to escape from 

 so distressing a position, and may God grant that the method lately 

 proposed by MM. Bermond, Baudelocque, Jr. and Toirac, may 

 not deceive the expectations of its inventors. These three physi- 

 cians seem to have thought, at the same time, and without each 

 other's knowledge, that by bringing the two extremes of an electric 

 circle, in the womb, in contact with some given part of the child, or 

 merely upon the belly, that its muscular contractions would necessa- 

 rily be brought into play, provided it were not dead. It is a fact, 

 that both reason and analogy are in favor of this idea; but upon so 

 difficult and serious a subject we ought to wait for a longer experi- 

 ence and not pronounce lightly. 



1120. The foetus is alive, and to keep it so, we have either to en- 

 large the openings through which it has to pass, or make new ones: 

 at the commencement of the last century, even when accoucheurs 

 met with a case of pelvis so deformed as to render delivery im- 

 possible, they preferred to sacrifice the child rather than perform 

 any operation upon the mother. Some of the boldest of them, like 

 Mauriceau, had immediate recourse to embryotomy, or at least to 

 cephalotomy; while others, as Delamotte, being more timid, and. 

 more humane, in appearance, but in reality more barbarous, pa- 

 tiently waited until the child was dead before they would proceed 

 to cut it to pieces. At the present day, inasmuch as spmphy- 

 seotomy and the cesarian operation have been successfully performed 



