MENTS IN INSTRUMENTS FOR FACILITATING LABOUR IN WOMEN
Year: 1877

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by James Travis Whittaker at the Office
of the Commissioners of Patents on the 10th February 1877.
JAMES TRAVIS WHITTAKER, of Todmorden, in the County of Lancaster " IMPROVE-
MENTS IN INSTRUMENTS FOR FACILITATING LABOUR IN WOMEN."
This Invention has for its object the facilitating and shortening of labour in
women by means of improved instruments, which avoid the inconveniences and
terror associated with ordinary instruments
An instrument made with the improvements can be applied at any time after
labour has once been established, and with the patient in any position suitable for
digital examination, whilst the operation with the instrument may with care be
made such that the patient may be quite unaware of its being used The instru-
ment is contrived so that the two blades are introduced at the same time, one of
them being rotated after introduction, but being adaptable whilst rotating to any
outline of head or passage One catch locks the blades on the rotating one becoming
opposite the other, and another catch locks the handles together after compression,
thereby rendering it unnecessary to maintain a compressing or grasping strain with
the hand after the handles have once been sufficiently closed
One of the blades of the improved instrument is formed with a straight or nearly
straight shank, on which is fixed a handle plate having hinged to its outer end a
hand piece on shell to fill the hand in grasping A ball is fixed or formed on the
straight shank, and works in a socket formed for it on the shank of the other blade,
the handle plate of which latter extends from the side of the socket opposite to that
from which the blade extends, so that the two handles are reversed relatively to the
blades as with ordinary forceps The ball-and-socket joint takes the place of the
lock or hook joint of ordinary forceps, and whilst allowing of all the movements of
which ordinary forceps are capable in addition admits of one blade being rotated
relatively to the other A hand piece or shell is jointed by a swivel joint pin at its
inner end to the handle plate of the blade attached to the socket, and this hand
piece can be set round on its joint pin so as to be at right angles to the handle
plate in order to give leverage in rotating, whilst the hand piece of the other handle
can at the same time be turned out on its hinge so as to give steadiness in holding
one blade whilst rotating the other.
When the blades are placed together the hand piece or shell which is hinged to
the outer end of its handle plate can be folded over the other hand piece, and the

page_text: A slight
instrument will then be in a compact and conveniently portable form
spring is applied to give the hand piece a tendency to close. The catch for locking
the blades opposite each other is a small stud carried by a blade spring fixed to the
outside of the socket, and enters through a hole in the socket into a notch or groove
of the joint ball The catch for maintaining the instrument in a closed state is
applied to the extreme ends of the handles and is any suitable kind of catch
arranged to engage on the handles being brought together The joint ball is secured
in the socket by a ring fixed by means of a small screw inside the outer socket
mouth after the ball has been inserted.
Instead of the ball-and-socket joint a triple swivel Joint may be used for con-
necting the shanks of the blades, such triple swivel Joint consisting of two pieces
connected together by a swivel joint pin, and each piece having one of the blade
shanks connected to it by a swivel Joint at right angles to the joint connecting the
two pieces to each other