This gradually began to change towards the end of the 19th century as germ theory and modern bacteriology developed. By the start of the 20th century, the advancement of anesthesia and antisepsis had made C-sections practical and safe enough for doctors to start focusing on refining and improving the procedure.
While doctors and patients alike were encouraged by anesthesia to resort to cesarean section rather than craniotomy, mortality rates for the operation remained high, with the infections septicemia and peritonitis accounting for a large percentage of post-operative deaths.
January 14, 1794: Elizabeth Bennett Became the First Woman in the U.S. to Deliver a Baby by C-section and Survive.
Nationally, C-sections comprised 5.5 percent of all deliveries in 1970, but rose steadily to comprise 15.2 percent of all deliveries in 1978.
In the late 1800's there were reports of Caesarean section deliveries to save the mother and baby's lives in Africa, Europe, the United States and England. With increased urbanization, the growth of hospitals and the introduction of anaesthetic agents the operation began to be performed more often.
In the 1800, shock was one of the leading causes of C-section fatalities. Before anesthesia, when a baby was hopelessly stuck doctors would perform a very unpleasant procedure called a craniotomy. This literally involved crushing the baby's skull to get them out of the mother. Just awful.
In most hospitals in the 1950's, women were told that they must be sterilized after 2, 3, or 4 C-sections. The purpose of this paper was to describe what happens to uterine scars in women who had previous C-sections, in a setting where women were not sterilized after a C-section.
The history of caesarean section (C-section) dates back as far as Ancient Roman times. Pliny the Elder suggested that Julius Caesar was named after an ancestor who was born by C-section. During this era, the C-section procedure was used to save a baby from the womb of a mother who had died while giving birth.
It is obvious that at some point some mothers may have survived this procedure and reports are known from the beginning of the 16th century. The first certain survival dates from 1610, when the child was reported to have lived 9 days, while the mother survived for 25 days.
The first woman reported to have lived through a C-section was the wife of a 15th century Swiss farmer, Jacob Nufer, who was so distressed by his wife's prolonged labor that he cut her open and delivered the child.
The Queen for example, when she gave birth, she gave birth at Buckingham Palace, a home birth, a home cesarean section. “But essentially what was important was the fact that until then, it was going to be witnessed, not in the room but outside, by Prime Ministers, by Home Secretaries.
Eventually Charles was born by a Caesarean section in a music room in Buckingham Palace which had been converted into a theatre. She was attended by Obstetricians Sir William Gilliatt and Sir John Peel, and also midwife Helen Rowe, who was thought to be present for all the births.
Kristina House (USA) has given birth to 11 children (six girls and five boys) all by Caesarean section between 15 May 1979 and 20 November 1998.
Furthermore, emergency Cesarean section operations had a greater impact on neonates' sense of touch compared to those born by planned Cesarean section. Children born through emergency Cesarean section were prone to tactile resistance due to the experience of birth trauma.
For Dr. Ana Langer, who leads the Women and Health Initiative at the Harvard T.H. Chan school of public health, one of the most telling findings in the study is that more than 10 percent of women undergoing a C-section died from complications due to anesthesia.
Cesarean section also requires a longer recovery time, and operative complications such as lacerations and bleeding may occur, at rates varying from 6% for elective cesarean to 15% for emergency cesarean.
In fact, historians are certain that Julius Caesar was not delivered by the dangerous cesarean section. The evidence for this comes from indirect inferences. Cesarean sections were rarely attempted on living women until the early 17th century, and Julius Caesar's mother was alive and well through her son's adult life.
“So, every patient is different and every case is unique. However, from the current medical evidence, most medical authorities do state that if multiple C-sections are planned, the expert recommendation is to adhere to the maximum number of three.”
HISTORICAL RECORDS OF C-SECTIONS
There is some argument among scholars that C-sections were performed in Egypt around 3000 BCE, but the earliest clear documentation in ancient texts comes from early Rome.
Extraperitoneal CS is a method of surgically delivering a baby through an incision in the lower uterine segment without entering the peritoneal cavity, given keeping the peritoneal cavity intact reduces the risk of adhesions, postoperative ileus, and future infertility related to surgery [20].
The overall cesarean delivery rate in the United States increased 60% from 1996 to 2009, from 20.7% to 32.9% (1). From 2009 to 2019, the cesarean delivery rate generally declined, reaching 31.7% in 2019 (2) before increasing in 2020 (31.8%) and 2021 (32.1%) (3).
Twilight Sleep (Dammerschlaf) was a form of childbirth first used in the early twentieth century in Germany in which drugs caused women in labor to enter a state of sleep prior to giving birth and awake from childbirth with no recollection of the procedure.
Long-Term Effects of C-Sections
Children born by C-section also suffer increased rates of diseases, including asthma, type I diabetes, allergies, obesity, as well as reduced overall cognitive functioning and lower academic performance.
Childbirth took two hours less in the '60s than it does in 2012. That's partly because women were less likely to receive epidurals, which can increase labor time by 40 to 90 minutes. Also, delivery practices have changed since 1960 — more docs back then were more likely to use forceps or perform episiotomies (yikes!).
The first documented cesarean section on a living woman was performed in 1610; she died 25 days after the surgery. Abdominal delivery was subsequently tried in many ways and under many conditions, but it almost invariably resulted in the death of the mother from sepsis (infection) or hemorrhage (bleeding).