h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Met says Penicillin.

I say pizza, but that one's probably already been mentioned.

Anti-retro-viral drugs (pending viral evolution of resistance which will come shortly after the invention of anti-retro-viral impregnated products such as baby wipes, hand sanitizer, underarm deodorant and livestock feed).

Oh, speaking of babies, the Caesarian Section. And so counter-intuitive too! We'll save people's lives by cutting the mother open and pulling out the baby ahead of time! Just imagine how that suggestion went down the first time someone made it. How many people do you suppose have been saved by this procedure?

I have always understood that the Caesar was the first
and that the method was used because the Mother's life
was considered unsavable.

Babies were often saved from mothers who had actually
died in giving birth. In Macbeth someone is 'untimely
ripped from their mother's womb'.

Obviously things have come a long way and the procedure
is used now to 'save' both lives.

We need an expert here.
But I suspect an actual census would be impossible and
we'll only get a guesstimate based on some statistical
analysis of probabilities divided by estimated populations
over centuries of time with a plethora of variable factors.


~jwf~

I don't think Caesar was his first, mainly because the mother invariably died during the process and Caesar's mother was one of his personal advisors. Unfortunately he didn't heed her advice "Don't go to the Forum today dear. Sit and tell your old mum about Gaul again"

I suspect it has more to do with the verb "caedere" - to cut - than with thon boyo from Asterix with the laurel wreath...

Once again the Guide disrupts my whirled view.
What I thought I knew is wrong again.
Innit?

~jwf~

>>a guesstimate based on some statistical analysis of probabilities divided by estimated populations over centuries of time with a plethora of variable factors.<<

Yup. Sounds about right for statistics like we did it at school, and as seen since in everyday life, newspapers etc. Damn those variable factors.

Yeah. You never know where you stand with them...

From Wikipedia:

"The Roman Lex Regia (royal law), later the Lex Caesarea (imperial law) of Numa Pompilius (715–673 BC), required the child of a mother dead in childbirth be cut from her womb. This seems to have begun as a religious requirement that mothers not be buried pregnant, and to have evolved into a way of saving the fetus, with Roman practice requiring a living mother be in her 10th month of pregnancy before the procedure was resorted to, reflecting the knowledge that she could not survive the delivery. Speculation that the Roman dictator Julius Caesar was born by the method now known as C-section is apparently false. Although Caesarean sections were performed in Roman times, no classical source records a mother surviving such a delivery, – the earliest recorded survival dates to 1500 AD – and Caesar's mother Aurelia Cotta lived to serve him as an advisor in his adulthood."

...

"In 1316, the future Robert II of Scotland was delivered by Caesarean section—his mother, Marjorie Bruce, died. This may have been the inspiration for Macduff in Shakespeare's play Macbeth."

...

"European travelers in the Great Lakes region of Africa during the 19th century observed Caesarean sections being performed on a regular basis. The expectant mother was normally anesthetized with alcohol, and herbal mixtures were used to encourage healing. From the well-developed nature of the procedures employed, European observers concluded they had been employed for some time."

...

"On March 5, 2000, Inés Ramírez performed a Caesarean section on herself and survived, as did her son, Orlando Ruiz Ramírez. She is believed to be the only woman to have performed a successful Caesarean section on herself."

If that tells us anything, it is that caesarean sections are more successful if you have access to modern technology.

"Like, duh", as Plato may have once said.

That could well be the H2G2 motto.

"Like, duh - Plato."

PP

Well c'mon. When you're presented with a lot of cut n pastes from Wikipedia...

I was just pointing out where they started, long with some interesting facts. No need to get all testy.

One man's testies are another man's .

Oops, that doesn't sound right. What I meant to say
was thank you to Mr X for his synopsis of the question.
I love it when someone else does the research for me.

~jwf~

I meant to say, I learned more in Mr X's Post 110
than I ever knew before about Caesar's section.

It was most welcome after the disappointing suspicion
from KB that the procedure is not named for Caesar but
from the Latin word to cut.


~jwf~

Well he was right. Probably.

I can recall reading of a medieval case where neither the midwife nor the village physician knew how to do a Caesarian, but the husband, who worked as a castrator of pigs did, and successfully performed the operation on his wife whom would have died otherwise, in the opinion of all three.

Met also says glasses, pads, and banana milkshakes.

Pads as in...?