How the cervix killed the cervimeter: A nonstandard story of successful measurement

Abstract

This paper connects the historical case of mid-twentieth century cervimetry in the US to contemporary examples which suffer from similar methodological problems. By examining why past and current technological attempts at measuring the cervix have failed, this paper offers not only a compelling description of enduring methodological problems in standardized cervimetry, but also a normative claim: We need no better instrument for measuring cervical dilation than the human hand. This paper outlines why we are unlikely to ever see a successful replacement for the manual method, why the human hand is a surprisingly capable instrument, and rightly caution that further efforts at designing a cervimeter would be misguided and fruitless. This counter-intuitive history of how a non-standard measuring method succeeds, in the wake of decades of standardized failures, can shed light on broader concerns in the clinical measurement community about how to achieve meaningful, usable measures.