SYMPHYSEOTOMY. 505 



in presence of A. Leroy, upon a woman named Supiot, and was so for- 

 tunate as to save both the mother and the child. This success gave 

 rise to an extraordinary degree of enthusiasm; the hundred tongues 

 of fame, seemed insufficient to celebrate the glory of the author 

 of so brillaint a discovery. The faculty of medicine at Paris thought 

 they could not reward him too highly by passing a solemn decree, 

 and causing a medal to be struck in honor of him; so that this same 

 Sigault, whom the academy of surgery would not deign to hear, 

 a few years before, was soon proclaimed the greatest benefactor to 

 humanity, and almost equal to the gods. Such exaggeration as 

 this soon gave rise to a lively opposition amongst the surgeons, 

 and was the signal of a combat, in which a great number of the 

 medical men of different countries felt themselves called on to take 

 a part. The Academy of Medicine warmly supported the opinions 

 of Sigault; the Academy of Surgery, as much perhaps out of spite 

 for not having retained them in its own bosom as from conviction, 

 continued to reject them with no less ardor. Both parties were 

 unjust: the dispute became scandalous; libels were published, per- 

 sonalities were not spared, and being divided into Symphysians 

 and Cesareans, as they were then called, the accoucheurs, actuated 

 by inveterate hostility to each other, were not ashamed to keep up 

 this controversy, equally curious and extraordinary, until the com- 

 mencement of the present century without coming to an understand- 

 ing. Plenck, Siebold, A. Leroy, Baudelocque, Saccombe, Giraud, 

 and Ansiaux, descended into the arena, but without perceiving that 

 the question was illy stated. Sigault in fact was wrong to propose 

 symphyseotomy as a substitute for the cesarian operation; every 

 body would have been on his side, had he only proposed it as a 

 new resource, fit to enrich the art, an operation attended with its 

 own peculiar applications, advantages, and dangers, and which at 

 least renders cephalotomy and the cesarian operation more rarely 

 indispensable.. Weidemann and Desgranges were the first to view 

 it in this light, and by imitating them, Thouret and M. Gardien have 

 at last put an end to these disgusting polemics, which served as an 

 excuse and screen for the jealousy and envious rivalry of all the little 

 spirits of the period, to blacken the fame of a great many most re- 

 spectable men. 



But at the present day, when all the passions awakened on the 

 occasion of this quarrel have become extinct, it is an easy matter to 

 estimate the operation of symphyseotomy at its just value. 



1123. Mechanism. "When the inter-pubal fibro-cartilage is divi- 

 ded either after death or on the living subject, the bones generally 

 separate about one inch, of their own accord, and this separation 

 44 



