514 CESAREAN OPERATION. 



the time of Simon its application has been further extended to the 

 incision or incisions which it is sometimes necessary to make in the 

 cervix of the uterus, with the view of facilitating the passage of the 

 head through it. 



1136. Historical. Being lost, as it were, in the night of time, 

 the origin of this operation has not as yet been precisely ascertained 

 by any one. In the fabulous ages, it was said that a foetus, the 

 son of Jupiter, was extracted from the belly of Seraele by Mer- 

 cury. The Romans made the same statement concerning Escula- 

 pius, who was extracted from the belly of his mother by Apollo, 

 after she had been already placed on the funeral pile destined to 

 consume her. Virgil also says that Lycus came into the world in 

 the same manner. These vague traditions, a passage in Pliny, and 

 certain Roman laws, induce a belief that the cesarean operation 

 must have been employed in the most remote ages. M. Mansfield, 

 in a work, an extract of which is contained in the Bulletin des 

 Sciences Midicales, attempts to prove that it was practised even by 

 the Jews. It is said in the Talmud and the Mischajoth that a child 

 born by a section of the belly has not the rights of primogeniture. 

 Jaschi has described it in his commentary on the Nidda, and says 

 that women who have undergone it are not compelled to perform^the 

 forty-days purification. There is, however, no certain proof that it 

 was performed upon a living woman anteriorly to the year 1520, 

 unless we admit as authentic the case of the lady at Craon, who, 

 according to the statement of Goulin, was subjected to the section 

 of the belly in 1424, and, as well as her child, survived the operation. 

 The ancient Greek and Latin physicians make no mention of it 

 whatever. Guy de Chauliac, who, seems to have first described it, 

 founding his opinion upon the following passage of Pliny, {Jluspica- 

 tins, enectd parente, gignuntur, sicut Scipio Jifricanus prior natuSj 

 primusque Csesus, Cseso matris utero, dictus; qua de causa, CaesO' 

 nes appellati. Simili mode natus est Manlius qui Carthaginem 

 cum exercitu intravit,) believes that it took its name from Julius 

 Caesar; others, on the contrary, think that the general and his family 

 took their name from the operation. Bayle remarks that Aurelia, 

 the mother of Caesar, was still living when he went to Britain, and 

 consequently that the story related by Pliny ought to be rejected as 

 fabulous; the researches of Weidemann and those of Sprengel hav- 

 ing given no satisfactory solution of this problem, we are obliged to 

 confess that the etymology of the cesarean operation is no better 

 known than its origin. 



1137. Rousset was the first author who dared to maintain that it 

 may and ought to be had recourse to in the living subject; after 



