York Guides

Caesarean sheds new light on past

Paul Jeeves (Yorkshire Post)
IT IS a tragedy which must have left the friends and relatives of a medieval mother-to-be distraught.

For decades she had battled tuberculosis, which claimed her life only weeks before she was due to give birth.
But her 900-year-old remains unearthed during the longest running excavation in British archaeological history have given a fascinating insight into medieval society's attitudes to life and death.
Scientists believe they have found one of the earliest examples of an attempted Caesarean operation in the UK as a midwife battled to save the unborn baby's life after its mother lost her life.
Initial research on the skeletons of the peasant woman and her unborn child, which was 10 weeks away from the full nine-month term, began in 1990 after the remains were found at Wharram Percy, the nation's best preserved example of a medieval village near Malton in North Yorkshire.
But it is only now that the scientists believe they have proof of the attempted Caesarean section on the dead woman, a procedure which was mentioned in a letter to the Archbishop of York in the early part of the 11th century.
Dr Simon Mays, a skeletal biologist at English Heritage's Centre for Archaeology in Portsmouth, has been conducting in-depth research including DNA tests on the remains.
He said: "Wharram Percy is the most important archaeological site which has been found from the medieval period, and this is one of the most important finds that has been discovered there.
"A lot of the time skeletons provide us with scientific details, but these remains have given us an insight into people's attitudes from the medieval times.
"It is extremely difficult to record these attitudes accurately as there is often no real proof. But what this has shown us is that medieval society valued life so much that they were willing to attempt to save a child's life after the mother-to-be had died.
"Infant mortality rates were high in the medieval period compared to today, but this attempted Caesarean operation on a dead woman was still performed.
"As a scientist you look at a lot of skeletons and it is often hard to think of the remains as actual people. But this provides a tableau of human tragedy which brought me up short when I realised what had happened."
An archaeological jigsaw puzzle has gradually fallen into place as evidence of the attempted Caesarean operation was amassed.
The unborn baby's head was facing to the west as is traditional for a Christian burial, but the remains were found in an unusual position between the thigh bones of its mother's remains suggesting a terrible tragedy had happened during the pregnancy.
The woman's tuberculosis was at an extremely advanced stage, with evidence of abscesses along her spine, although the condition would not have prevented her falling pregnant.
Written medical and religious records dating from the medieval period, including the letter to the Archbishop of York, have suggested the attempted Caesarean procedure should be carried out to save an unborn child when its mother dies, no matter how ill she was.
Dr Mays said: "The most likely explanation for this double burial is that the pregnant women died of TB and the foetus was cut free from the womb in the hope it might survive.
"Caesareans don't seem to have been carried out on living women at this time, probably because it was far too dangerous.
"However, physicians and priests did recommend that midwives should try and extract the baby from the womb if the mother died. Its probable the foetus was found to be dead, or died soon afterwards, and so was buried with its mother."
The remains of the mother and child are among the 687 skeletons which have been unearthed at Wharham Percy during the archaeological dig which began in 1950 and continued for the next 40 years.
The intriguing remains of the mother and unborn child were found in the graveyard not buried in a coffin and wrapped simply in a shroud, suggesting that the woman was from a peasant background and was not wealthy enough to be interred inside the church.
She is thought to have been aged between 25 and 35, although it is not known whether she was pregnant with her first child.
Around 15 per cent of the 687 skeletons found at Wharham Percy are of children aged under 12 months providing evidence of high infant mortality rates, but no other examples of an unborn baby buried alongside its mother have been discovered.
More research will be conducted on the remains over the next few years including DNA analysis to establish whether tuberculosis had been passed from the mother to her unborn child.
Their remains will eventually be returned to Yorkshire and buried on consecrated land.
The intriguing story of the burial is part of a new exhibition at the Malton Museum, called Wharram Percy – Life in a Medieval Village.
Backed by £50,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund, it features a partially reconstructed medieval house and previously unseen relics, including the country's only surviving medieval bake-stone, proof that Wharram's villagers ate oatcakes and flat breads.
Modern technology has also provided a face-to-face encounter with peasants, after 3D laser technology was used to scan skulls.
The flood of findings from Wharram Percy has also brought new storyboards with new artist's impressions based on bone research and recent fieldwork by English Heritage investigators. They concluded that the village was less of a sleepy backwater than previously thought and more intensively settled, with houses jostling for space.

Dubious myths of ancient operation

THE HISTORY of Cesarean sections is shrouded in myth and is of dubious accuracy. It is commonly believed to be derived from the surgical birth of Julius Caesar, but that seems unlikely as his mother Aurelia is reputed to have lived to hear of her son's invasion of Britain and at that time they were performed only when the mother was dead or dying, as an attempt to save the child and so increase the population.
Roman law under Caesar decreed that all women fated by childbirth must be cut open; hence, cesarean. There are other possible Latin origins including the verb "caedare," meaning to cut, and the term "caesones" applied to infants born by postmortem operations.

26 August 2005