My memory is foggy, but I think I remember in the play “Julius Caesar” that one of the characters had some kind of prophecy going for him that he couldn’t be killed by any man born of a woman, but ended up being killed by someone who was taken from his mother’s womb.
Is this where we get the term “Casarean Section”? I thought it might be, but my brother says it’s an urban legend and to look at Snopes. I never heard the urban legend, I kind of thought it up myself, but I tried searching at Snopes but was unable to find it.
You’re actually thinking of Shakespear’s MacBeth as the play where the main character is told that he cannot be killed by a man “of woman born” and so is dispatched by MacDuff, who was “from his mother’s womb/Untimely ripp’d.”
Cesarean sections are a pretty old medical idea, but it’s only been recently that the mother might survive the operation. This link from the National Library of Medicine disputes the idea that Julius Ceasar was delivered by c-section because apparently his mother lived for some time after his birth. So yes, the term is an urban ledgend, but a very old one.
Fun info: a woman in Mexico had the first recorded self administered C-section about a year ago (can’t find the link now). Apparently, she’s had kids before, so she knew when this delivery was going wrong. She downed three shots of stiff liquor and sliced herself with a short knife. Mom and baby went to the distant hospital later and checked out okay.
Much obliged if anyone can dig up the news story on this.
