Читать книгу The Little Book of Medical Breakthroughs - Dr. Naomi Craft - Страница 16

For many years childbirth was a dangerous experience. If the baby didn’t deliver easily, there weren’t many ways to assist the mother.

Forceps were not invented until the late 16th century, and for over 100 years they were the secret of the Chamberlen family and so not widely used. Until the late 19th century, Caesarean sections were a last resort, to be used on a dying or dead woman to extract the baby. So it was a great relief to women when a less traumatic option was developed, which relied on literally sucking the baby out of the womb.

The first attempted vacuum extraction, also known as ventouse, was probably undertaken by the English surgeon James Yonge (1647–1721) in 1706, who recorded putting a cupping glass on the baby’s head to create an artificial vacuum.

Cupping was a technique that had been used by healers in a number of different countries for centuries. It involved using a heated metal or glass cup over the area to be treated, such as a boil or a skin puncture. As the cup cooled, a vacuum developed in the cup, drawing blood or other fluids into it. Yonge’s attempt to deliver the baby using this technique was unsuccessful, but it inspired others to adapt the idea. For example, James Simpson (1811–1870), a Scottish obstetrician, described a successful delivery with his Suction Tractor to the Edinburgh Obstetric Society in 1848.

Attaching the suction cup to the baby’s head helps to pull the baby out of its mother’s womb.

However, the ventouse never really became popular until the 20th century, because more reliable methods for generating a vacuum were needed, as well as a better design for the cup.

After the Second World War (1939– 1945), the vacuum extractor began to gain in popularity, as new technology was combined with the idea to produce several better designs. One of the best-known of these vacuum extractors was designed in 1952 by Viktor Finderle (1902–1964), a Croatian obstetrician. However, a stainless steel cup vacuum device introduced by Tage Malmström in Sweden in 1954, and modified by him in 1957, largely outmoded Finderle’s version and is the antecedent of the modern models used today.

Current devices use more sophisticated technology to monitor and limit the pressure applied to the baby’s head, which makes them safer to use.

See: Forceps, pages 24–25; Caesarean Section, pages 19–20