Did you know...? The first caesarean in history wasn’t carried out by a doctor

The word cesarean is referred to in several different historical origins. The most widespread reverence dates back to the birth of Julius Caesar, who, according to Pliny the Elder acquired his name due to the sectioned uterus of his mother.

In any event, the word comes from the Latin verb caedere, which refers to its main function, which is to cut the abdominal walls of the mother to forcefully remove the baby. It was a regular practice in Ancient Rome, when the mother died during the birth, before the baby had been born and by law the incision was carried out to try to save the foetus.

The first caesarean that was carried out on a live woman, however, does not appear until 1500, specifically in Siegerhausen, Switzerland. The person who carried it out was Jakob Nufer, who rather than having any medical knowledge, was a pork butcher and who carried out a caesarean on his wife, who had been in fruitless labour for several days and was on the edge of death. Nufer decided to try to extract the child at home, having obtained the necessary permission from the authorities and he proceeded with the operation. It is worth remembering that there were still almost four hundred years to go before anaesthesia was invented, meaning that no medicines were used in the operation.

In spite of this, and of the lack of hygiene at that time, the child not only was removed after the first incision with no injury, but both mother and child survived. The child lived, as registered by the anatomist Caspar Bauhin, to the age of seventy-seven years and the mother gave birth naturally another five times. Bauhin was, therefore, the first person to leave a written record of the first successful case of a caesarean on live woman.