504 SYMPHYSEOTOMY. 



a great many times, the operation of embryotomy is not admissible 

 until every thing announces that the foetus is dead, or that it cannot 

 live. 



SECTION 3. 

 Of Symphyseotomy. 



1121. Historical. Being persuaded that the articulations and 

 even the bones of the pelvis were capable of being softened during 

 pregnancy, Fernel, S. Pineau, and many other old writers, con- 

 ceived that it would be useful to favor their softening, in cases of con- 

 tracted pelvis, and that this might be effected by means of embroca- 

 tions, cataplasms, and topical or general bathing ; founding their 

 opinion upon these vulgar traditions, which are spoken of by Riolan 

 and Pare, and which induce the common people to believe that in 

 many countries there is a practice of breaking the os pubis in young 

 girls as soon as they are born, for the purpose of rendering child- 

 birth more easy for them; upon what Galen, in speaking of the pel- 

 vis, says, viz. non tantum dilatari, sed et secari, tuto possunt, ut 

 internis succurratur, some modern physicians have supposed that 

 the operation of symphyseotomy must have been conceived of in the 

 remotest antiquity; it is true that CI. Delacourvee* mentions a de- 

 formed woman who died previously to delivery, and in whom, after 

 death, he divided the symphysis pubis for the purpose of enlarging 

 the pelvis; Plenck acted in the same manner in 1766 upon another 

 subject; but it is proper also to state that no one had formally thought 

 of proposing the performance of this operation in the living subject 

 with the view of facilitating delivery, when Sigault, who was still a 

 medical student, made it the subject of a memoir, which he presented 

 to the Academy of Surgery in 1768. 



1122. The idea of symphyseotomy is, therefore, really due to this 

 surgeon; the Academy was hardly willing to hear the first proposal 

 of it, and Louis, who communicated it to Camper, treated it as a 

 ridiculous project, engendered in a young brain that was as yet in- 

 capable of any reflection; but not so the celebrated Hollander, who, 

 after performing several experiments upon the dead subject, replied 

 to the secretary of the academy, that at some future day it might be 

 advantageously resorted to. On his part, Sigault was not discon- 

 certed, and reiterated the same idea in his thesis at the school of 

 Angers in 1773. Four years afterwards he performed his operation 



* De Nutritione Fcelus in utero paradoxa. Dantisci, 1655. 



