ABSTRACT
Just when Hugh Chamberlen II was distributing the midwifery forceps to selected Tory surgeons — that is, during the reign of George I — London medical practitioners of Whig allegiance were discovering an alternative to the forceps in the recent writings of the Dutch obstetric surgeon Hendrik van Deventer. These London "Deventerians" were contesting the forceps as early as 1716; and they went on doing so through the publication of the instrument in the 1730s, and beyond this until about 1750. Whatever the significance of the fillet, the main line of contest was drawn between Deventerianism and the forceps, each connected with specific political allegiance. Perhaps this politico-obstetric association merely reflected accidents of patronage — fact that Hugh Chamberlen II was a Tory. Yet it had some deeper significance: this is suggested both by Deventer's own intensely religious motives, and by analogy with other major practical medical innovation of the period, inoculation for smallpox, which was specifically Court Whig project.
