1673

Hugh Chamberlen, in his translation of Mauriceau’s Traité des maladies des femmes grosses, announced, without revealing, the family secret that permitted the delivery of a living child when delivery was obstructed by the head. It proved to be the use of three instruments: the midwifery forceps, the vectis, and the fillet. He was ignored (A. Wilson, 54-57). Yet various forms of these instruments were being used by others in the Dutch Republic, France, and England by early 1730s (66). In England, Hugh Chamberlen II sold forceps to Tories like him, so that “the forceps was specifically a Tory instrument in London until about 1740” (74).