BUILDING THE NATION THROUGH WOMEN'S HEALTH: MODERN ...

Totals for Technical Equipment
Sterilizers Approx. $1,200
Instruments 475
Outside cases 100
Teaching apparatus 200
1,975
Carriage and customs 25 percent 494
Total $2,469 Mex
Plus books of $200 and surgical equipment: delivery bed ($600) and operating table and
instruments ($600), bringing the total cost to Mex$3,869.” 573
The first part of this list reads like a torturer’s dream: craniotomy forceps, perforator,
decapitating hooks, curved scissors. These, of course, were most often used in cases where the
infant had died in labor, for example when the mother’s pelvis was too narrow to allow the infant
passage, or in the case of “monsters.” Narrow or deformed pelvis was a common cause of
maternal and infant mortality due mainly to the lack of calcium and Vitamin D in Chinese diets.
This situation could be more easily managed if caught early during prenatal visits so that a
caesarean section could be scheduled. Many early medical missionaries recounted horrible tales
of prolonged labor during which the infant had died and had to be decapitated and removed in
pieces. Sometimes the jieshengpo would attempt such a removal, or in trying to speed things
along pull too hard on the infant and end up retrieving a disembodied arm, or leg, or a head.
This naturally caused great distress – not only psychologically – to the mother, as a decomposing
infant in the vaginal canal is a sure incubator for septic infection. With a list like this, one
573 John B. Grant, letter to Victor Heiser, September 20, 1926.
249