The Pelvis Collection in Kiel and the Quantification of Difficult Birth

Abstract

Since the 17th century, malformations of the female pelvis have been known to cause severe birth complications. In the 19th century, the so-called narrow pelvis became a central object of research in medical obstetrics. Extensive collections of female pelvic specimens were created. This paper examines the origins and uses of the so-called Kiel obstetric pelvic collection, which was established from the 1830s onward as part of research into the narrow pelvis by the obstetrician Gustav Adolf Michaelis. He developed a widely applicable technique for measuring the pelvis and studied the problem by means of statistical analyses on hundreds of his patients. As the article shows, this pioneering metric-quantitative approach to the phenomenon had its origins in the administrative practices of the Kiel maternity hospital, which was a poor relief institution. In clinical practice, however, the limitations of birth planning based on pelvic measurement immediately became apparent, foreshadowing the failure of the method. Nevertheless, Michaelis and his collection were appropriated by a positivistic-hagiographic medical historiography.