Researches in obstetrics / by J. Matthews Duncan.

  • Duncan, J. Matthews (James Matthews), 1826-1890.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Researches in obstetrics / by J. Matthews Duncan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    real features and importance, and hid from general appreciation, by the violent and not always seemly struggles which have taken place upon them, and which have uniformly ended, like many battles with more sanguinary weapons, either in absence of real result, or in the more or less complete discomfiture of all the contending parties. But perhaps the medical philo- sophers of another age will have wisdom to regard, without pity or shame, these squabbles of our day as necessary episodes in the story of the progress of im- perfect beings towards perfect truth—in the progress of human intellects towards real science. The doctrine of the duration of labour has been the real centre of many discussions which have been invested with other names, derived from some thera- peutical principle which has been supposed to receive confirmation or confutation from its bearings upon it. In these discussions the obstetric schools of Edinburgh and of Dublin have more than once been found on oj)posite sides, as if truth were indicated by difierent symbols in the two countries. A dispassionate in- quirer, perusing these interesting discussions, will not fail to discover that, while each party had much truth as well as error in its arguments, each, with a blind zeal, attacked indiscriminately both truth and error in its opponents. The chief practical questions which have been in- vestigated in connection with the doctrine of the duration of labour are the artificial dilatation of the OS uteri, certain other points in the management of