Ah, to be a woman in the Regency era! Carriage rides, balls and capes trimmed with ermine....sounds relatively lovely to be a woman of the past, does it not? Perhaps - and perhaps not as I ponder the significance of #InternationalWomen'sDay in 2025.
Just recently, I've encountered so many who seem so determined to make sure we women know know what we're 'good for' - and it's nothing good at all really. Practically livestock, present merely to serve men and serve up their heirs (mostly male too of course). It seems we might be sliding backwards on the march towards equality - so here's a stark reminder of why days like 8 March still matters.
In fact, down under in Australia Women's History Month extends for all of March - so naturally I thought, chainsaws.
Ladies, if you ever needed another reason to be grateful for modern medicine, let’s talk about how the chainsaw - yes, the very tool used to fell trees and inspire horror movies - was originally invented to assist in childbirth all the way back in 1785. Clearly, the miracle of life wasn’t dramatic enough, 18th-century doctors thought, “What if we saw through her pelvis?”
The early days of obstetrics
Before c-sections became a viable option, labour complications could be life-threatening. Without anaesthesia, antiseptics, or even a basic understanding of hygiene (handwashing was an optional hobby back then, even for surgeons), childbirth was essentially a high-stakes gamble. If a baby was stuck in the birth canal, desperate measures were taken.
Enter Jean-René Sigault, a French doctor in the 1770s, who proposed the symphysiotomy - a surgical procedure that involved cutting through the mother's pubic bone to widen the birth canal. The idea wasn’t entirely new, but his technique was considered ground breaking (and, frankly, bone-breaking). This method allowed babies to be delivered vaginally when a natural birth seemed impossible.
The first successful operation was performed on Madame Souchot, a woman whose pelvis was deformed due to rickets. Having already lost four babies, she had little hope of delivering a live child. In an era where childbirth could also become a death sentence, Sigault’s slice-and-save method gave her - and many women and their babies - a fighting chance.
An innovation in birthing tools
As you might imagine, manually sawing through bone with a knife was both time-consuming and traumatic. (Because what new mother doesn’t want her pubic bone meticulously chiselled away mid-labour?) So, in 1785, Scottish doctors John Aitken and James Jeffray upgraded the procedure with a revolutionary new tool: the Aitken’s flexible chainsaw.
This early chainsaw wasn’t quite the roaring mechanical beast we associate with lumberjacks and horror villains. It was a fine, serrated chain with teardrop-shaped handles, designed to cut through the pelvis with greater speed and precision.
One particularly charming feature was a removable handle that allowed doctors to attach a blunt-pointed needle, guiding the saw behind the pubic bone before merrily moving their hands back and forth to cut through it. As horrifying as this sounds, it was actually considered less barbaric than using a hammer and chisel. (Still thinking about muslin and balls? Me neither.)
By the 1890s, Italian obstetrician Leonardo Gigli refined this invention, introducing the Gigli twisted wire saw, which featured T-shaped handles for better grip and a fine-toothed wire chain that made slicing through bone a little less nightmarish. Thankfully, as anesthesia, antiseptics, and, well, basic human decency improved, symphysiotomies fell out of favour and c-sections became safer to perform. Gigli’s wire saw is still used in delicate medical procedures where precision is key. So, in a way, this little saw-that-could lives on, though thankfully, not in the maternity ward.
Pelvic surgery to power tool
Fast forward to the 19th century, when orthopaedic surgeon Bernhard Heine took the idea of a bone-cutting saw and ran with it. This is the menacing device I've placed at the top of this post. It's called the osteotome, a hand-cranked device with rotating teeth that could slice through bone quickly and cleanly. While it wasn’t often used in childbirth (small mercies), it laid the foundation for modern medical saws — and, indirectly, the timber-cutting chainsaw.
By the early 20th century chainsaws found a new purpose in the logging industry, proving that sometimes, the most terrifying inventions can have unexpectedly practical applications.
So, ladies, the next time you hear the whir of a chainsaw, take a moment to appreciate that we now have c-sections, epidurals, surgical precision, and actual medical oversight in childbirth. While our foremothers endured the OG chainsaw massacre, we can rest easy knowing that power tools are firmly confined to home improvement stores - where they belong. That said, our choices over our own bodies appear to be under siege again (not sure this ever even paused to be honest), so stay vigilant.
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