1692 engraving of a caesarean section from Johannes Scultetus’s Auctarium ad Armamentarium Chirurgicum (An Addition to the Surgical Arsenal)
28 June 2020
A caesarean section is the surgical delivery of a child. The term comes from the belief that an ancestor of Julius Caesar was delivered in this manner—caesus is the supine form or perfect passive participle of the Latin verb caedere meaning to cut. This bit of lore comes down to us from Pliny the Elder’s Historia Naturalis, written in the first century C.E.:
Auspicatius enecta parente gignuntur, sicut Scipio Africanus prior natus primusque Caesarum a caeso matris utero dictus, qua de causa et Caesones appellati.
(It is more auspicious when the mother dies giving birth, just like Scipio Africanus the Elder and the first of the Caesars, named for having been cut from his mother’s womb, which is also the reason for the Caesar family name.)
Of course, in antiquity such operations would almost inevitably result in the death of the mother and would be performed to save the child only after the mother had died.
But while the belief in this bit of folklore about the genesis of the Caesar family line is ancient, it took some 1,500 years for the term to be applied to the surgical operation. In 1513 German physician Eucharius Rösslin authored a Latin text on childbirth which was translated in English in 1540 with the title the Byrth of Mankynde. That translation describes such an operation thusly:
But co[n]trary to all this / yf it cha[n]se that the woman in her labor dye / & the chyld hauyng lyfe in it / the[n] shall it be mete to kepe open the woma[n]s mouth / and also the nether places / so that the chylde maye by that meanes bothe receaue & also expell ayre & brethe which otherwyse myght be stopped / and the[n] to turne her on the left syde / & there to cutte her open / & so to take out the chylde / & they that are borne after this fashion be called cesares / for because they be cut out of theyr mothers belly / whervpon also the noble Romane cesar the .j. of that name i[n] Rome toke his name.
And by 1607 such deliveries were known as caesarian sections. From Simon Goulart’s Admirable and Memorable Histories Containing the Wonders of Our Time:
Of the Caesarien deliuery or Section.
THE Caesarien deliuery is an extraction artificially made of the childe by the mothers side, who could not otherwise bee deliuered but by a sufficient incision, as well of that which is on the belly, or exterior part of the belly, as of the matricall body: without preiudicing not-with-standing, the life of the one or the other (so as there happens no other accident) or hindering the Mother from bearing of more Children.
Sources:
American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2020, s.v. cesarean section.
Goulart, Simon. Admirable and Memorable Histories Containing the Wonders of Our Time. London: George Eld, 1607, 258–59. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. Caesarean | Caesarian, adj. and n.
Pliny the Elder. Naturalis Historia. Book 7, Chapter 9. https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Pliny_the_Elder/home.html
Roeslin, Eucharius. The Byrth of Mankynde. London: Thomas Raynald, 1540, 53. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Image credit: Wellcome Trust. Scultetus, Johannes. Auctarium ad Armamentarium Chirurgicum. Leiden: Cornelium Boutesteyn and Jordanum Luchtmans, 1692.