In the early years of the sixteenth century, in the small Swiss village of Siegershausen, a man named Jacob Nufer faced a situation of unimaginable desperation. His wife had been in labour for days. The local midwives had exhausted every known method to deliver the child, but nothing worked. In an age before modern obstetrics, such a prolonged labour almost always ended in tragedy. Yet Nufer, a humble pig-gelder by trade, who was accustomed to performing surgical operations on livestock, refused to give up.
According to later accounts, Nufer begged the town authorities for permission to attempt what no man had ever done before: to operate on his living wife to deliver the baby. It was a radical request, for in those days a caesarean section was typically performed only after the mother’s death, as a last resort to save the infant’s soul through baptism. The idea of cutting open a living woman was nearly unthinkable.
Woodcut by Jonas Arnold made in the 16th century shows a caesarean section being performed.
Click Here to read more Amusing Planet
