ABSTRACT
It seems likely that in desperate cases surgeons had been called to save the life of a labouring woman by extracting the child with instruments long before The birth of mankind was published, although all the instruments then known were destructive and could not fetch a live child. At the time The birth of mankind was published, Pare and other surgeons in France were experimenting with the method of delivery by podalic version. Pare himself learned the technique from the successful practice of Thierry Hery and Nicole Lambert — master barber-surgeons in Paris – and published his directions in 1549. There were more complicated and specialised instruments, which were fully described and illustrated in Rueffs book, including the drake's bill, speculum, apertorium, and long tongs. However by the end of the seventeenth century it was generally accepted that if operative delivery was necessary, a man-midwife should be called in.
