Peter Chamberlen

P. Chamberlen. Line engraving by T. Trotter, 1794.
Obstetrical Forceps, by Smellie (1792)

Pierre (Peter) Chamberlen was the name of two brothers, the sons of Guillaume (William) Chamberlen (c. 1540 – 1596), a Huguenot surgeon who fled from Paris to England in 1569. They are famous for inventing the modern use of obstetrical forceps. It remained a family secret for nearly two centuries and through four generations of accoucheur.

Peter the Elder

Peter the Elder lived from 1560 to 1631. He became surgeon to Queen Anne (wife of James I) and accoucheur to Queen Henrietta Maria (Charles I's queen) in London. Admitted to the College of Barber-Surgeons in 1598, he came into serious conflict with the College for prescribing medicines contrary to their rules. In 1612 he was committed to Newgate prison for this offence and only released after the intercession of the Lord Mayor of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was appointed surgeon to Queen Anne in 1614 and was present at the birth of Charles II in 1630. His wife, Anne Harris, who he married in London in 1584, predeceased him, as did his son David (1590–1618) who died in the East Indies while serving as a ship's surgeon on the Royal James. His daughter Esther married Thomas Cargill, an Aberdeen merchant; she and her children are all named in his will but as Chamberlen's younger son, William (1598 -) is not mentioned, it most likely he too predeceased his father.[1]

Peter the Younger

Peter the Younger lived from 1572 to 1626 and also worked as surgeon and obstetrician. He married Sara DeLaune, the daughter of William DeLaune, a fellow Huguenot physician and minister, who had fled from France to England in the wake of the St Bartholomew Day massacre in 1572, and the sister of Gideon DeLaune, apothecary to Queen Anne and a founding benefactor of the Society of Apothecaries. They had eight children, among them Dr. Peter Chamberlen(1601–1683), also a physician and obstetrician.

Peter the Elder is believed to be the inventor of the forceps. The brothers went to great length to keep the secret. When they arrived at the home of a woman in labour, two people had to carry a massive box with gilded carvings into the house. The pregnant patient was blindfolded so as not to reveal the secret, all the others had to leave the room. Then the operator went to work. The people outside heard screams, bells, and other strange noises until the cry of the baby indicated another successful delivery.

Woodham Mortimer Hall, home of the Chamberlen family

The two families lived in London, Peter the Elder in the wealthy Parish of St Dionys Backchurch, and Peter the Younger in the Liberty of Blackfriars, where the church of St Ann Blackfriars had many Huguenot parishioners. As they became wealthy and established in English life, Peter the Elder acquired property in Kent, Downe, where Peter the Younger died, Croydon, Keston and Farnborough. All of this passed to his grandson, Thomas Cargill and it was Dr Peter Chamberlen who later acquired Woodham Mortimer Hall, a 17th-century gabled house in Essex which became the family home. A blue plaque fixed to the hall notes them as pioneering obstetricians. The hall passed out of the Chamberlen family in 1715 when the family home was sold. Dr Peter Chamberlen's own set of forceps were found in 1813 under a trap door in the loft of the hall and given to the Medical and Chirurgical Society which passed them to the Royal Society of Medicine in 1818.[2]

Later Chamberlens

References

  1. Russell, Lesley. An Asclepiad family − The Chamberlens and DeLaunes, 1569–1792: Five generations of surgeons, physicians, accoucheurs and apothecaries. Journal of Medical Biography. Sage Publications. Prepublished Online 26 June 2014
  2. Christie, Damian (September 2004). "The Surgeon returns to Melbourne; Chamberlen’s forceps find a home at the College" (PDF). O&G (Victoria, Australia: The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists) 6 (3): 246–247. Retrieved 16 November 2008.
  3. Katz, David S. (1988) Sabbath and sectarianism in seventeenth-century England. Leiden, Netherlands. Brill. 224 pages, pp. 48–89

External links

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