page_title: Murdoch Cameron
section_title: Caesarean section
hierarchical_section_title: Murdoch Cameron / Caesarean section
caption_attribution_description: English: Murdoch Cameron's first three caesarean patients
context_page_description: Murdoch Cameron was Regius Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Glasgow from 1894 to 1926. He was a pioneer of the Caesarean section under modern antiseptic conditions, becoming world famous after the success of his first such operation in 1888, at what was then the Glasgow Lying-in Hospital and Dispensary, now the Princess Royal Maternity Hospital, an institution he was deeply involved with. He was honorary President of the first international Congress on Obstetrics and Gynaecology, in 1892. His son Samuel James Cameron followed in his footsteps, becoming Reguis Professor of Midwifery at Glasgow in the 1930s.
context_section_description: In an improvised operating theatre crowded with doctors and undergraduates on the top floor of the Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital on 10 April 1888, Murdoch Cameron carried out the first Caesarean section under modern antiseptic conditions. The patient, Catherine Colquhoun, was a rachitic dwarf (i.e. her skeleton was affected by rickets) and so was incapable of natural birth. Cameron, who as an undergraduate had worked as a surgical dresser to the pioneer of antiseptic surgery Joseph Lister at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, helped transform the Caesarean section, under antiseptic conditions, from a dreaded and little used procedure, that usually ended with the death of the mother, into the routine and safe operation it has become.
caption: First three Caesarean section patients
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