The _indications_ for performing the operation are so different in this country to what they are elsewhere that they require especial mention: in England the operation is never performed upon the living subject except where the child cannot be delivered by the natural passage; under these circumstances it is scarcely undertaken in this country for the purpose of saving the child's life, but merely that of the mother, it being considered preferable to deliver the child by perforation or embryotomy, even when known to be alive, than to expose the mother to so much suffering and danger. On the Continent and also in America, it has not been considered in so dangerous a light as in this country, still less as an operation almost certainly fatal to the mother: therefore, besides being indicated as a means for preserving the mother's life, it is performed for the purpose of saving the child's life in cases where, by using the perforator, the child might be brought through the natural passages. The results of the Cæsarean operation have been so unfavourable, and the character of the process so frightful, as to have rendered it a measure of peculiar dread to practitioners, and in different times and countries the strongest feelings have been excited against it. By many of the celebrated authors of former times, viz. Ambrose Paré, Guillemeau, Dionis, &c. it was looked upon as altogether unjustifiable, and a similar opinion was entertained by many of our own countrymen at a much more recent period, (Dr. W. Hunter, Dr. Osborn, &c.) There is no doubt that in England it has been peculiarly unsuccessful. Dr. Merriman has collected the results of 26 cases of Cæsarean operation: of these only 2 mothers and 11 children survived; thus out of 52 lives only 13 were saved. On the Continent it has been far more successful. Klein has collected with the greatest care 116 well authenticated cases, of which 90 terminated favourably; and Dr. Hull, in his _Defence of the Cæsarean Operation_, has recorded 112 cases, of which 69 were successful. M. Simon has not only collected a number of cases which were favourable, to the number of 70 or 72, but which were performed on a few women, "some of them having submitted to it three or four times, others five or six, and even as far as seven times, which if they were all true, would superabundantly prove that it is not essentially mortal." (_Baudelocque_, transl. by Heath, § 2095.)