If you've ever watched a classic horror movie, there's a good chance a chainsaw is involved.
These powerful tools are synonymous with woodcutting and forestry but what if that wasn't their original purpose?
Was the chainsaw actually invented as a medical instrument to assist childbirth?
Verdict:
TRUE
Childbirth was considerably riskier for the most part of human history.
Giving birth could quickly turn fatal before the development of antibiotics, the use of anaesthesia and simple hygiene procedures like hand washing.
There were relatively few safe solutions available to doctors if a baby could not be delivered and the caesarean section was one potential remedy.
However, this procedure was very dangerous in the 1700s, as women failed to survive it without advanced infection control.
As a result, medical professionals looked for alternative strategies.
In the 1770s, French doctor Jean-René Sigault proposed a new and controversial method, inspired by the earlier writings of Severin Pineau, who had described a separation of the pubic joint in a pregnant woman.
Sigault believed this separation could be done surgically to widen the pelvis and allow a stuck baby to pass through the birth canal.
In 1777, Sigault and his assistant tested the procedure on a patient named Madame Souchot.
She was 40 years old and had a pelvis narrowed by rickets, a disease that softens bones. She had already lost four babies and was unlikely to survive a caesarean section.
With few options left, Sigault performed what became known as a symphysiotomy: cutting through the joint at the front of the pelvis to create more space.
Remarkably, both mother and baby survived. The procedure soon gained attention and was adopted in other difficult births.
To perform these operations, surgeons used specialised cutting tools. One important instrument was later refined by German physician Bernhard Heine in 1830.
His device, called the osteotome, used a small chain with teeth that moved by turning a handle.
Though it was designed for medical surgery, its chain mechanism resembles the cutting system used in chainsaws.
Over time, surgical methods improved and safer caesarean sections became common.
So the chainsaw started out as a medical tool that helped deliver babies in the 18th and 19th centuries and played an unexpected role in the history of one of today's most recognisable machines.
Source:
https://www.sciencefocus.com/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/
