Excerpt from A Treatise on Abdominal Palpation, as Applied to Obstetrics, and Version by External Manipulations

Although the classic work of Pinard was in my hands before I left this country, I had no positive idea of the facility, the utility and the certainty of diagnosis by Palpation, until I found it constantly and successfully proved during my stay in Ger many, where it has been and is so generally employed and universally known, that it is not deemed requisite to include any detailed account of the procedure in systematic works on obstetrics.

Since my return, engaged in teaching practical obstetrics for two years, I found no work in English, to which I could refer my students, in order to follow my instructions.

In all the text-books the subject was mentioned in the most cursory and unsatisfactory manner.

There was no methodical work in which the whole subject was considered in connection with diagnosis and the correction of mal-presentations by external manoeuvres, save the published results of Pinard's researches in his cases. We had the publications of Wright, Chadwick, Richardson, Wilson and the elaborate and well digested papers of Munde (amer. Journ. Of but they were only to be found in journal literature, and were consequently not accessible to students as a class.

I therefore, with the consent of Dr. Pinard, undertook the translation and publication of that part of his work concerning external diagnosis and manipulations for the use of my class and also that the younger members of the profession might have the opportunity to study and appreciate so important a part of the obstetric art. Dr. Pinard not only kindly authorized this, but generously offered the use of his plates, for which I here make my acknowledgement. The publisher however procured the cuts from Baltimore artists, which do not compare unfavorably with the original.

T he subject being so purely demonstrative, the translator has felt it his duty to make his work as literal as possible.

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