Category: Birth Pregnancy & Obstetrics
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Marie de’ Medici, the multiparous queen
The Louvre Museum in Paris displays the cycle of twenty-four large-scale paintings by Peter Paul Rubens of scenes from the life of Marie de’ Medici, one of the most influential and controversial figures in French royal history. Originally commissioned by Marie for her Luxembourg palace, the cycle is now displayed in the Louvre’s Galerie Medicis.…
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That we are all bastards
Frank González-CrussíChicago, Illinois, United States The indelicate and seemingly insulting phrase that I have chosen as a title for this piece comes from Shakespeare. The great bard, in Cymbeline (II, iv), makes Posthumus say: … We are all bastards.And that most venerable man, which IDid call my father, was I know not whereWhen I was…
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Separating the inseparable: Seeing and practice makes it possible
Alan Jay SchwartzPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Conjoined twins present a rare and challenging occurrence. With an incidence of 1 per 50,000–200,000 births,1 the successful separation of conjoined twins is a phenomenal medical-surgical challenge.2 Two reasons, among others, explain why such separation has become successful: a) detailed visualization of the pathologic anatomy and b) simulating and…
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Worth the wait
Jennifer WalkerCarbondale, Illinois, United States Being a mom was something I knew I wanted from an early age, but no one thinks when you decide to start a family, that it might take years to happen. My husband and I have been together since high school. We finished college and got married in our early…
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Massaging the baby
Erin FroschCork, Ireland The centuries-old practice of baby massage has been used as early as 2670 BC in China1 to promote bonding between parent and child and demonstrate affection through physical touch, words of affirmation, and quality time. It has been passed down from generation to generation in cultures across Africa, Asia, and the South…
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Doctoring while pregnant
Katie TaylorOakland, California, United States “Are you sexually active?” “No, but you are,” a patient, one day in early spring, responds. Her timing is good, and the point is obvious. I am twenty weeks pregnant and showing, belly at two-thirds basketball. When I tell an older male patient I’m pregnant, he congratulates me, tells me…
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Israel Spach the biographer and the Lithopedion of Sens
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Israel Spach (Israele Spachio, Spachius) (1569–1610), was raised and studied in Strasbourg and later in Paris under Jean Riolan the Elder.1 He finished his medical studies at the University of Tübingen under Andreas Planer in 1581.2 In 1589 he returned to Strasbourg, where he married3 and lived until his death. The…
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The history of the C-section
Julius BonelloAjoke IrominiPeoria, Illinois, United States A procedure that removes a live fetus through an abdominal incision in a pregnant woman is known as a Cesarean section or C-section. Its original intention was to remove a dead baby from a dying or dead mother. Therefore, Julius Caesar (100–44 BC) was not delivered by Cesarean Section…
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Surgery, gynecology, obstetrics, and pain
Jayant RadhakrishnanChicago, Illinois, United States Pain caused by surgical interventions is incorrectly considered an unimportant, self-limiting inconvenience. “Let them scream—it is a relief of nature,” said Benjamin Winslow Dudley, a professor of anatomy, surgery and medicine at Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky from 1817 to 1850. If Dudley’s unanesthetized patients squirmed during an operation, he would…
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Ian Donald: Ultrasound pioneer
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, England Ian Donald was born in Liskeard, Cornwall, UK in 1910 of Scottish ancestry. His father was a general practitioner. He was educated in Scotland at Fettes College and spent a brief period in South Africa from 1925 to 1930, where he studied for a BA degree in Cape Town, before entering…