In a communication to Croston, Harris remarked that this was the first successful Cesarean section for double monstrous conception in America, and added that in 1881 Collins and Leidy performed the same operation without success.
Instances of repeated Cesarean section were quite numerous, and the pride of the operators noteworthy, before the uterus was removed at the first operation, as is now generally done. Bacque reports two sections in the same woman, and Bertrandi speaks of a case in which the operation was successfully executed many times in the same woman. Rosenberg reports three cases repeated successfully by Leopold of Dresden. Skutsch reports a case in which it was twice performed on a woman with a rachitic pelvis, and who the second time was pregnant with twins; the children and mother recovered. Zweifel cites an instance in which two Cesarean sections were performed on a patient, both of the children delivered being in vigorous health. Stolz relates a similar case.
Beck gives an account of a Cesarean operation twice on the same woman; in the first the child perished, but in the second it survived. Merinar cites an instance of a woman thrice opened.
Parravini gives a similar instance. Charlton gives an account of the performance carried out successfully four times in the same woman; Chisholm mentions a case in which it was twice performed.
Michaelis of Kiel gives an instance in which he performed the same operation on a woman four times, with successful issues to both mother and children, despite the presence of peritonitis the last time. He had operated in 1826, 1830, 1832, and 1836. Coe and Gueniot both mention cases in which Cesarean section had been twice performed with successful terminations as regards both mothers and children. Rosenberg tabulates a number of similar cases from medical literature.
Cases of Cesarean section by the patient herself are most curious, but may be readily believed if there is any truth in the reports of the operation being done in savage tribes. Felkin gives an account of a successful case performed in his presence, with preservation of the lives of both mother and child, by a native African in Kahura, Uganda Country. The young girl was operated on in the crudest manner, the hemorrhage being checked by a hot iron. The sutures were made by means of seven thin, hot iron spikes, resembling acupressure-needles, closing the peritoneum and skin. The wound healed in eleven days, and the mother made a complete recovery. Thomas Cowley describes the case of a negro woman who, being unable to bear the pains of labor any longer, took a sharp knife and made a deep incision in her belly--deep enough to wound the buttocks of her child, and extracted the child, placenta and all. A negro horse-doctor was called, who sewed the wound up in a manner similar to the way dead bodies are closed at the present time.
Barker gives the instance of a woman who, on being abused by her husband after a previous tedious labor, resolved to free herself of the child, and slyly made an incision five inches long on the left side of the abdomen with a weaver's knife. When Barker arrived the patient was literally drenched with blood and to all appearance dead. He extracted a dead child from the abdomen and bandaged the mother, who lived only forty hours. In his discourses on Tropical Diseases Moseley speaks of a young negress in Jamaica who opened her uterus and extracted therefrom a child which lived six days; the woman recovered. Barker relates another case in Rensselaer County, N.Y., in which the incision was made with the razor, the woman likewise recovering. There is an interesting account of a poor woman at Prischtina, near the Servian frontier, who, suffering greatly from the pains of labor, resolved to open her abdomen and uterus. She summoned a neighbor to sew up the incision after she had extracted the child, and at the time of report, several months later, both the mother and child were doing well.
Madigan cites the case of a woman of thirty-four, in her seventh confinement, who, while temporarily insane, laid open her abdomen with a razor, incised the uterus, and brought out a male child.
The abdominal wound was five inches long, and extended from one inch above the umbilicus straight downward. There was little or no bleeding and the uterus was firmly contracted. She did not see a physician for three hours. The child was found dead and, with the placenta, was lying by her side. The neighbors were so frightened by the awful sight that they ran away, or possibly the child might have been saved by ligature of the funis. Not until the arrival of the clergyman was anything done, and death ultimately ensued.
A most wonderful case of endurance of pain and heroism was one occurring in Italy, which attracted much European comment at the time. A young woman, illegitimately pregnant, at full term, on March 28th, at dawn, opened her own abdomen on the left side with a common knife such as is generally used in kitchens. The wound measured five inches, and was directed obliquely outward and downward. She opened the uterus in the same direction, and endeavored to extract the fetus. To expedite the extraction, she drew out an arm and amputated it, and finding the extraction still difficult, she cut off the head and completely emptied the womb, including the placenta. She bound a tight bandage around her body and hid the fetus in a straw mattress. She then dressed herself and attended to her domestic duties. She afterward mounted a cart and went into the city of Viterbo, where she showed her sister a cloth bathed in blood as menstrual proof that she was not pregnant. On returning home, having walked five hours, she was seized with an attack of vomiting and fainted. The parents called Drs. Serpieri and Baliva, who relate the case.