editions during Mauriceau's lifetime, and there were two reprintings after his death. A noticeable feature of the work, says von Siebold, is the care which the author takes to preface all his lectures with a detailed exposition of the anatomical relations of the region concerning which he is about to speak; and this custom, which he was the first to introduce, has since then been followed by the great majority of those who have written on the subject of midwifery.
In the book which hears the title "Observations sur la grossesse, etc.," Mauriceau gives an account of his first and only interview with the English obstetrician, Hugh Chamberlen, to whom is commonly accorded the credit of having invented the first pattern of the obstetric forceps. From this account it appears that on August 19, 1670, Mauriceau was called to see a primiparous woman, thirty-eight years old, who had already been in labor for several days, but who had not yet been able, owing to the extreme narrowness of her pelvis, to give birth to her child. (The case was one of head presentation.) As Mauriceau was not at all willing to perform a Caesarian section,—which alone, as he believed, promised a way out of the difficulty,—Chamberlen, who happened to be in Paris at that moment, was asked to see the patient. He came at once, made a hasty examination, and declared that he needed only six or seven minutes for effecting, by means of the method which he had invented, the delivery. The patient was placed under his charge and he proceeded to apply his method. Instead of a few minutes, he spent three hours in the attempt to accomplish this purpose, but without success; and then admitted that it was impossible, in this particular case, to effect delivery. At the end of twenty-four hours the woman was dead. A postmortem examination revealed the fact that the uterus was torn in several places and perforated at one spot, all of which lesions had evidently been produced by the instrument or instruments employed by Chamberlen. "To complete this story," adds Mauriceau, "it should be remembered that, six months before the occurrence of the events just narrated, this physician had come to Paris
