_History of the operation.--Period of pregnancy most favourable for performing it.--Description of the operation._ Perhaps the greatest improvement in operative midwifery since the invention and gradual improvement of the forceps is the induction of artificial premature labour for the purpose of delivering a woman of a living child, under circumstances of pelvic contraction, where either the one must have been exposed to the dangers and sufferings of the Cæsarean operation, or the other to the certainty of death by perforation, or at least where the labour must have been so severe and protracted as to have more or less endangered the lives of both. It consists in inducing labour artificially, at such a period of pregnancy that the child has attained a sufficient degree of development to support its existence after birth, and yet is still so small, and the bones of its head so soft, as to be capable of passing through the contracted pelvis of its mother. _History._ Few improvements have met with more violent opposition, or have been more unjustly stigmatized or misrepresented, than artificial premature labour, and it redounds, not a little, to the credit of the English practitioners that they have not only had the merit of its first invention, but with very trifling exceptions, have been the great means of bringing it into general practice and repute. To the late Dr. Denman we are under especial obligations in this respect; for, although himself not the inventor of this operation, he, nevertheless, was one of the first who widely recommended it to the profession, and actively promoted it by the powerful support of his name and writings. "A great number of instances," says he, "have occurred to my own observation of women so formed that it was not possible for them to bring forth a living child at the termination of nine months, who have been blessed with living children, by the accidental coming on of labour when they were only seven months advanced in their pregnancy. But the first account of any artificial method of bringing on premature labour was given me by Dr. C. Kelly. He informed me that about the year 1756 there was a consultation of the most eminent men in London, at that time, to consider of the moral rectitude and advantages which might be expected from this practice, which met with their general approbation. The first case in which it was deemed necessary and proper, fell under the care of the late Dr. Macauley, and it terminated successfully.[102] Dr. Kelly informed me he himself had practised it, and among other instances mentioned that the operation had been performed three times on the same woman, and twice the children had been born living." (Denman's _Introduction to the Practice of Midwifery_, 2d ed. vol. ii. p. 174.) Since this the observations of Mr. Barlow, Dr. Merriman, Mr. Marshall, Drs. J. Clarke, Ramsbotham, &c. &c., have afforded an ample body of