Ch 19-The Reproductive System

The story that the C-section originates—either in practice or in name, depending on who’s telling the story—with the birth of everyone’s favorite Roman Consul has been around for a while and gets repeated often. The 10th century Byzantine-Greek historical encyclopedia The Suda reads, “For when his mother died in the ninth month, they cut her open, took him out…” Even the Oxford English Dictionary gives that story as the term’s origin. Almost every other historical and etymological source, though, is stacked behind the answer “probably not.”