0"T' LAERT> "! - USP

TEACHING IN SURGERY. 431
they "were sadly wanting in experience of the arts of
turning and extracting the child. When they intended to
perform any operation they came with a hooked instrument,
and in a pitiful and horrible manner tore the child into
many pieces in the mother's womb in cases where, had
they possessed the befitting knowledge, they might easily
have reached it with their bare hands, and thus have prevented
the uterus being lacerated as well as the child and
extracted with it, as it actually was frequently in the
case of these unhappy women."*
Dr. DEISCH was called by the populace " the butcher of
children and women." Augsburg was his slaughter-house.
" He perforated and dismembered without intermission,
whether the children were alive or dead. He practised
decapitation, too. If he had performed turning he w^as
astounded if the child came into the w r orld alive." In
1753 he used sharp instruments 29 times in 61 births,
10 of the mothers perishing. His colleague MlTTEL-
HAUSER, who resorted to similar practices as town
physician of Wiessenfels in Saxony, considered he had
been especially successful if out of ten women whom he
attended only two died.f
In other places matters do not seem to have been at
times much more satisfactory; NICHOLS' choice satire
" The petition of the unborn babies" (London, 1751) in
which they complain of the rough handling they get from
the obstetricians, and the figure of Dr. SLOP in STERNE'S
"Tristram Shandy,"—the accoucheur with his instruments,
all ready for action,—were certainly more than mere products
of the writers' fancy.
We can easily understand how a universal disgust at
this kind of midwifery arose. The progress which this
branch of knowledge made in the 18th century opened
men's minds to a more correct recognition of the laws of
* LOR. HEISTE.R : Medicinische, chirurgische undanatomische Wahrnehmun-
*gen, Rostock 1753, Vorrede.
t SIEBOLD op. cit. ii, 426 et seq.