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Why Were Chainsaws invented

    The birth process may not be simple today, but in an era before the advent of nitrous oxide, cleanliness, and our best friend morphine, which was a lot of it in the past, it was a lot more complicated. Switzerland’s first recorded account about a positive cesarian birth (C-section) during the 1500s. The procedure was executed by a cow-castrator who was a pro his wife. According to the story written 82 years after the event and discredited by historians, the mother and baby survived, and the child lived at 77 years old.

    The first account published of C-sections occurring in the US, in contrast, is much more shocking. In the 1830 issue in the Western Journal of Medical and Physical Sciences, the doctor Dr. John L. Richmond described the circumstances of a challenging birth that took place during the midst of a storm. After a long time, and labor not progressing, the doctor believed that the life of the woman to be in grave danger, and “feeling an intense and profound sense of my obligation, carrying just a small case of pocket instruments, at about 1 at night I began with the Caesarean Section.”

    With the help of a bent set of scissors, the surgeon cut the mother and tried to cut off the embryo. But, “as it was uncommonly large and the mother was very corpulent, and without assistance with this, I found this phase of my procedure more challenging than I expected,” he wrote. The mother was suffering from pain. He decided that “a mother without children was more beneficial than a child who is not a mother” and began saving the mother and taking out the fetus.

    The reason why chainsaws were created?

    A few years ago, the cesarean section was not widely employed since it was considered extremely risky, mainly because the anesthetic hadn’t been developed yet, and it was a considerable procedure.

    If babies become stuck due to breach issues or being too big, surgeons need to develop another way to make more room for their heads to pass through.

    Bone and cartilage will be extracted from the pelvis during the procedure known as a symphysiotomy.

    This was done initially by hand, using a small knife that took a long time and was extremely painful.

    To make it simpler, two doctors created the first version of the chainsaw around 1780 to make the procedure more efficient and less time-consuming.

    It was driven with a hand crank. It included teeth on an iron chain that could move around the outside. It’s smaller and less terrifying than the modern chainsaw.

    The invention’s popularity led to the chainsaw being employed in other surgeries that involved bone cutting, like amputations, for example – in theatre.

    The woodworking industry then picked it up after discovering how fast it could cut through complex objects.

    Who was the first to invent the chainsaw?

    The terrifying tool used to birth babies was developed in Scotland by John Aitken and James Jeffrey.

    Two Scottish surgeons are believed to create the chainsaw in the 1780s.

    John Aitken became a surgeon at his hospital, the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, and he also delivered medical demonstrations and lectures to students from universities.

    He was known to have implemented several functional changes in surgery, such as the creation of the chainsaw.

    Dr. Aitken’s co-author in the creation was Dr. Jeffray, a student at Glasgow University and Edinburgh University famous for dissecting bodies of those executed for murder.

    Jeffrey was the chair of twins of Botany and Anatomy in Glasgow University from 1790 and was appointed Vice-Rector of the University in 1800.

    That’s why chainsaws were created?

    It’s a good idea to sit in a comfortable position for this, as chainsaws were created to slice through bones during the birth of a child. The first chainsaw used in the timber industry was invented in the 1800s with two Scottish doctors, John Aitken and James Jeffrey. They created it for an operation known as a symphysiotomy and the removal of bone disease.

    The procedure was utilized in the early stages of childbirth, before the C-sections, because babies were too large or the breach and therefore could be born naturally. In the beginning, a small knife could be used to take out fragments of cartilage and bone around the pelvis to create more room for the infant, but it was discovered to be a mess and took a lot of time.

    In the 1780s, two doctors created the chainsaw to ease the process. The chainsaws of the time were much smaller, but there is a belief that the surgeries were performed without anesthetic. Yes, the chainsaw could cut bone in humans to help give birth.

    The chainsaw’s evolution


    A German orthopaedist known as Bernhard Heine designed another version of the chainsaw in 1830. as well as for use for surgery.

    The name was an osteotome that comes from osteotome, the Greek osteon (bone) and Tomi (cut), which means the bone cutter.

    In the early 20th century, the public realized chainsaws could benefit other fields besides medicine.

    The first patent granted for an electric chainsaw, or the “endless chainsaw” in its original form, came to a man named Samuel J Bens from San Francisco in 1905. The plan was the chainsaw to cut down giant redwoods.

    In 1926 the first electric chainsaw manufactured and sold was invented through Andreas Stihl. A lot of the first models were so big that they needed the operation of two people.

    The chainsaw was initially created to assist with difficult births.

    If you think of chainsaws, the most common applications that pop into your mind typically involve wood (and it’s not just cutting it). But how did chainsaws come to be created? You might be surprised to learn that its origins are somewhere between the lumber yard as you could get. The inventors of chainsaws were Scottish surgeons called John Aitken and James Jeffrey. They developed their gritty and dangerous tool to aid them in their job of cutting flesh and bone.

    Even in ideal situations, having a baby isn’t what many would consider being a pleasurable experience. However, in the 18th century, before the advent of anesthesia and other surgical instruments, the process was hazardous and without warning. When infants were born first or had their bodies imprisoned in the birth canal, doctors had to expand the pelvic region by cutting through cartilage and bone. Aitken and Jeffrey discovered that sharp knives weren’t quick enough, which is why quite shockingly, they developed chainsaws as a more accessible and more humane alternative.

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