HISTORY OF OBSTETRICS lvii
Labors and Their Treatment," in 1854, advocated the same procedure. Hicks applied the principle also to podalic version.
In 1820 Ritgen, of Germany, proposed and actually did gastro-ely- trotomy following Jorg's suggestion (1779-1856) in 1806; in 1822 P. S. Physick, of Philadelphia, proposed it to Horner, the anatomist, and in 1823 Baudelocque wrote a thesis upon it. J. G. Thomas independently originated the same idea which he first put into practice in 1870 on a cadaver and then did it on a woman in articulo mortis ("American Journal of Obstetrics," vol. iii,1870).
Most writers accord John Bard priority in diagnosing and operating on an extra-uterine pregnancy (1759), though there was a case — operator unrecorded — reported in the "American Magazine" for 1740; suggestions as to the advisability of abdominal section for intra-peritoneal hemor- rhage were also made by W. W. Harbert in 1849, and Stephen Rogers in 1867.
Hodge and Meigs, America's greatest teachers, but aggressively con- servative, opposed the use of ether in labor, the latter banning the anes- thetic because "it made the patient practically drunk and no self-re- specting woman would place herself under such an influence." Mean- while, N. C. Keep, of Boston, had used it on April 7, 1847, and reported it to the " Boston Medical and Surgical Journal" of that year under the caption "The Letheon Administered in a Case of Labor." A year later, Walter Channing had thus noiselessly opened the gates of life 581 times.
Several hospitals had lying-in wards after Shippen started his small private maternity hospital in Philadelphia in 1762. The Society of the Lying-in Hospital, New York, was founded in 1799: for want of funds it amalgamated with the New York Hospital. Joseph Warrington started the Lying-in Charity in Philadelphia in 1828; Jonas Preston founded the Preston Retreat (1873) in the same city.
In Boston the first lying-in hospital was organized in 1S32.
Howard A. Kelly.
Pamphlets on the History of Obstetrics.
Hodge, Hugh L., "The Principles and Practice of Obstetrics," (introduction). Philadelphia, 1864.
"A Century of American Medicine," 1776-1876. Philadelphia, 1876. ("Section on Gynecology and Obstetrics," by T. G. Thomas.)
Engelmann, G. J., "Pregnancy, Parturition and Childbed Among Primitive People." "American Journal of Obstetrics," New York, 1881, xiv.
Williams, J. \\\, "A Sketch of the History of Obstetrics in the United States up to 1860," "American Gynecology," 1903, vol. iii, a valuable
