many years a professor of obstetrics in the St. Louis Medical College. I
quote him with the more pleasure because of my personal acquaintance
with him, and of the universal esteem for ability and integrity in which
he was held by the medical profession.

Dr. L. Charles Boislinière, to whom I refer, had by his scientific
acquirements and his successful practice, during forty years of his
life, become, to a great extent, identified with the progress of the
science of obstetrics in this country; and a few months before his late
demise, he had published a useful work on "Obstetric Accidents,
Emergencies, and Operations."

In 1892 he read, before the St. Louis Obstetrical and Gynecological
Society, a lecture on the moral aspects of craniotomy and abortion, of
which a considerable portion is very much to our present purpose. The
Doctor herein clearly demonstrates that, in this matter at least, Ethics
and Medical Science are to-day perfectly concordant. He says:

"The operation of craniotomy is a very old one. The ancients entertained
the belief that, in difficult labors, the unborn child was an unjust
aggressor against the mother, and must, therefore, be sacrificed to save
her life.

"Hippocrates, Celsus, Avicenna, and the Arabian School invented a number
of vulnerating instruments to enter and crush the child's cranium. With
the advance of the obstetric art, more conservative measures were
gradually adopted, such as the forceps, version, induction of premature
labor, and, finally, Cesarean section.

"Cesarean section is reported to have been performed by Nicola de Falcon