Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/590

 lished at Paris in 1685 ("La pratique des accouchements, etc.") he lays down very strongly the maxim that the surgeon or the midwife who has charge of a case of labor should make no attempt to accelerate the efforts of Nature until it becomes plainly evident that artificial assistance is absolutely necessary. Portal cultivated the art of digital exploration to a very high degree of excellence. In Chapter VI., according to von Siebold, he expounds with great clearness the dangers which result from a prolapse of the umbilical cord. When this condition is discovered, no time should be lost in delivering the child. "In narrating some of his most remarkable cases Portal uses very simple and clear language, and he puts on record many things which in later years have been published as entirely new discoveries. But, unfortunately, his immediate successors were not disposed to profit from Portal's admirable teachings." (Von Siebold.) The only translations of his treatise into foreign languages that have been published are one in Dutch (1690) and another in Swedish by Van Hoorn (1723).

Pierre Dionis.—Pierre Dionis, who was born at Paris in the early part of the seventeenth century, was in some degree related to Mauriceau, the famous Parisian accoucheur. In 1673 he was appointed Royal Demonstrator of Anatomy and Surgery at the institution known as the "Jardin-du-Roi," and from this date onward, up to the year 1680, he gave instruction regularly in these branches of medical knowledge to large classes of students. He was particularly distinguished for the clear and methodical manner in which he handled the subjects upon which he lectured. In the year last mentioned he was called to Vienna to fill the position of Physician-in-Ordinary to Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria, but von Siebold, who is my authority for the present sketch, does not say for what length of time he continued to hold this position. His death occurred in 1718.

The earliest work published by Dionis bears the title: "Histoire anatomique d'une matrice extraordinaire," Paris, 1685. (Description of a case of extra-uterine