of Edinburgh , Session 1870-71. 
381 
of delivery by podalic extraction, the surgeon can exert a great 
deal more force to bring the child into the world than the most 
energetic labour can. Now, in these circumstances the surgeon 
can use no force nearly reaching to a quarter of a ton. A very 
much smaller power would rend the luckless body of the child in 
pieces. 
Such a power as a quarter of a ton does, in my opinion, represent 
a force to which the maternal machinery could not be subjected 
without instantaneous and utter destruction. To speak of a rigid 
perineum resisting such a power, or the fourth part of it, would 
be ridiculous. The possession and use even of a considerable portion 
of such a power would render the forceps and the cephalotribe 
weak and useless instruments. The mother could bray the child 
as in a mortar, and squeeze it through a pelvis which would, under 
other circumstances, necessitate Caesarean section. Such a power 
would, if appropriately applied, not only expel the child, but also 
lift up the mother, the accoucheur, and the monthly nurse all 
at once. It would be dangerous not only to the mother and the 
child ; it would imperil also the accoucheur. It has been cal- 
culated for me, that if this force were applied just as the chief 
resistance to delivery was overcome, the child would be shot out of 
the vagina at the rate of thirty-six feet per second!* The blow 
would be equal to the shock produced by the fall of the child from 
a height of twenty-one feet. 
In an early part of this paper I have said that the method of 
inquiring into the subject which Haughton adopts is both difficult 
and dangerous, and I think I have said enough to show that 
danger has not been avoided. There must be error in Professor 
Haughton’s calculation of the power produced by the action of 
the voluntary muscles, or there must be error in judging of the 
application of this power to the accomplishment of the function, 
or there must be 'error in both. I shall not attempt to show where 
the error lies, but its occurrence does not astonish me; for any one 
* In making this calculation the child is taken as 7 lbs., the pressure as 
580 lbs., and it is supposed to be exerted through a space of three inches — 
measurements which are fair statements of the case. It is farther supposed 
that the friction is negligible when compared with the forward pressure. 
This is certainly the case if the forward pressure be nearly as much as is 
stated by Professor Haughton as possible. 
VOL. VII. 3 If 
