The oldest authentic record is the case of Georgius, a celebrated orator born at Leontium in Sicily, B. C. 508. Scipio Africanus, who lived about 200 years later, is said to have been born in a similar manner. There is no reason to suppose that Julius Cæsar was born by this operation, or still less that it derived its name from him, for at the age of thirty, he speaks of his mother Aurelia as being still alive, which is very improbable if she had undergone such a mode of delivery. We would rather prefer the explanation of Professor Naegelé, viz. that one of the Julian family at Rome had been delivered _ex cæso matris utero_, and had been named Cæsar from this circumstance, so that the name was derived from the operation, not the operation from the name. "The earliest account of it in any medical work is that in the _Chirurgia Guidonis de Cauliaco_, published about the middle of the fourteenth century. Here, however, the practise is only spoken of as proper after the death of the mother." (Cooper's _Surg. Dict._) Among the Jews, however, it appears to have been performed on the _living_ mother at a very early period; a description of it is given in the _Mischnejoth_, "which is the oldest book of this people, and supposed to have been published 140 years before the birth of our Saviour, or, according to some, even antecedently to this period. In the _Talmud_ of the Jews, also, their next book in point of antiquity, the Cæsarean operation is mentioned in such terms as to render it extremely probable that it was resorted to before the commencement of the Christian era. In the _Mischnejoth_ there is the following passage, 'In the case of twins, neither the first child which shall be brought into the world by the cut in the abdomen, nor the second, can receive the rights of primogeniture, either as regards the office of priest or succession to property.' In a publication called the _Nidda_, an appendix to the _Talmud_, there is the following remarkable direction: 'It is not necessary for women to observe the days of purification after the removal of the child through the parietes of the abdomen.'" (_Introduction to the Study and Practice of Midwifery_, by W. Campbell, M. D. p. 260.) The first authentic operation upon a living woman in later times was the celebrated one by Jacob Nufer, upon his own wife, in 1500, after which, owing to its fatal character and the strong feeling against it, it was performed but rarely: still, however, sufficient evidence existed to mark its occasional success and urge its repetition in similar cases; and from what we have already stated, the history of the last twenty years shows that its results have rapidly become more and more favourable, so that in the present day it can be no longer looked upon as an operation of such extreme danger and almost certain fatality, as it was in former times.[101] CHAPTER IV. ARTIFICIAL PREMATURE LABOUR.