# Obstetric forceps

> Two curved blades that cradle a baby's head in a difficult birth

- Date: c. 1630
- Era: Renaissance
- Domain: [Medicine & Hygiene](https://lastcodex.org/en/domains/medicine/)
- Rebuild stage: III (Crafts & cities)
- Difficulty: 3/5
- URL: https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/obstetric-forceps/

Obstetric forceps are two curved steel blades that are slipped one at a time around a baby's head and locked together, so that a doctor can guide the head out when a birth stops progressing. They were first used by the Chamberlen family of surgeons in London early in the seventeenth century, who kept them secret for more than a hundred years.

![Obstetric forceps · Two curved blades that cradle a baby's head in a difficult birth](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/plate.BukOWkrX_pqqAm.webp)

## Legend

1. Fenestrated blade
2. Cephalic curve, the oval the two blades form
3. Pelvic curve
4. English lock
5. Handle with its finger rest

## What it is

Obstetric forceps are an instrument for a birth that has stalled when the baby's head has already come down into the mother's pelvis. They consist of two separate halves, called blades or branches, each made of a curved spoon, a straight shank and a handle. The doctor places one blade on one side of the head, then the other on the opposite side, and joins them where they cross. Holding the handles, the doctor can then guide the head and add a steady pull to the mother's own pushing.

A classic nineteenth-century pair, of the kind still made with few changes, is made of polished steel. Each spoon is pierced by a long window. Seen from above, the two spoons bow apart and then come together at their tips, enclosing an oval; seen from the side, they rise in a gentle arc. The shanks cross at a lock just in front of the handles, and each handle has a small shoulder where the fingers rest.

## How it works

Each spoon has two curves. The cephalic curve, across the width of the blade, follows the rounded side of the baby's head, so that the grip spreads over a broad area. The pelvic curve, along the length, follows the curved passage through the mother's pelvis, so that the blades can lie along it. Straight forceps such as those of the Norwegian obstetrician Christian Kielland have almost no pelvic curve, which makes it possible to turn the head as well as draw it out.

The window in each spoon makes the blade lighter and lets the most prominent part of the head bulge into it. This holds the head without squeezing it and keeps it from slipping. Forceps are a guide and a handle for traction. They are not built to compress the head, and some later designs added handles that limited how hard they could close.

![Close-up of the English lock resting on a folded cloth: two steel shanks cross, and a notch in each fits over a shoulder of the other, with no screw or pin through them](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v1.DRt16FVF_Q1Lur.webp)
_In the English lock each shank sits in a notch of the other, so the two blades join without a screw._

Because the blades are put in one at a time, they must join easily once both are in place, wherever each has settled. In the English lock, each shank has a notch, and the two notches slide into each other where the shanks cross. The shanks are long enough for the lock to close outside the mother's body, where the doctor can see it and feel whether it closes. French forceps used a screw through the crossing instead, and the sliding lock of Kielland's forceps lets one blade move along the other so that they can be joined even when they sit at different depths.

## How to do it

This cardboard model shows why forceps come in two halves that are placed one after the other. It is a table demonstration with a piece of fruit. Forceps are used only by obstetricians and midwives trained in assisted birth, in a hospital, and never by anyone else on a person or an animal.

![A brown cardboard model on a wooden table: two card blades with oval windows, crossed and joined by a brass paper fastener, their curved spoons on either side of a grapefruit](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v2.DTTaQVNo_Zsb0W3.webp)
_The two card blades, joined only after each has been laid against the fruit, cradle it without squeezing._

On a sheet of stiff card, draw one blade about 30 cm long: an oval spoon 6 cm wide at one end, a strip 2 cm wide for the shank and the handle. Draw a window inside the spoon, leaving a rim 1 cm wide all round. Cut it out on a cutting mat with a craft knife and use it as a template for the second blade. Curve each spoon gently by rolling it round a bottle and holding it there for a minute. Mark the point on each shank where the two will cross, about a third of the way from the handle, and pierce a small hole there.

Lay a grapefruit on the table. Try first to join the blades with a brass paper fastener through the two holes and then slip the joined pair round the fruit: the spoons catch on its widest part. Now take the fastener out, lay one blade against one side of the fruit and the second against the other side, cross the shanks and push the fastener through the holes. The curves now follow the fruit and the windows let it bulge slightly into them. Lift the handles together and the fruit comes with them without being squeezed. A pair with no curve, made from flat strips, only touches the fruit at two points.

## History and evolution

Older obstetric tools were hooks and perforators, used to remove a baby who had already died so as to save the mother's life. A set of instruments that belonged to the Chamberlens, a family of Huguenot surgeons who settled in England, includes such a crotchet. The family also had something new: an instrument that could deliver a living child from an obstructed labour.

Peter Chamberlen the Elder, who attended queens in London, is usually credited with the forceps, though the Royal College of Physicians judges it impossible to say which member of the family devised them. The family kept them secret for more than a century. They carried the instrument to a birth in a large ornate box, blindfolded the mother and let no one else into the room. Hugh Chamberlen, a grandson of the Elder's brother, wrote in the preface to his English translation of the Paris obstetrician François Mauriceau that his father, his brothers and he could deliver women without hooks, but that the method was not his to publish.

![A seventeenth-century pair of iron forceps of the Chamberlen type lying on a wooden board: two short straight blades with large windows in their curved spoons, crossed halfway and tied with a cloth tape through a hole in each](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v3.DPuprqZf_TcQvc.webp)
_On the Chamberlens' later pairs, a tape passed through a hole in each blade tied them where they crossed._

In 1813 a hidden cache of the family's instruments was found under the floorboards of the attic at Woodham Mortimer Hall in Essex, the house of Dr Peter Chamberlen. It held several pairs of forceps, with levers, fillets and hooks, and is now in the museum of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in London. The blades have a cephalic curve and windows, but no pelvic curve. Their joints show how the design changed: a rivet that was hard to work, then a pin on which the blades turned, and finally a tape threaded through a hole in each blade and tied.

Forceps of similar design spread through Europe in the early eighteenth century. In London, William Smellie made forceps of wood or metal with blades covered in leather, joined them with the English lock and published his treatise on midwifery in 1752. In Paris, André Levret described the pelvic curve in 1747, and his forceps were longer and heavier than Smellie's. In the later nineteenth century, axis-traction forceps such as those of Étienne Tarnier added a separate pulling handle so that the head could be drawn along the curve of the pelvis. Once instruments had to be boiled or steamed to sterilise them, wood and leather gave way to forceps made entirely of steel.

Through the twentieth century, safer caesarean section and the vacuum extractor took over many of the births for which forceps had been used. By the 1970s the [vacuum extractor](/en/inventions/obstetric-vacuum-extractor/) had largely replaced forceps in many European countries, and fewer young obstetricians now learn to use them.

## Key facts

- In use in the Chamberlen family: London, early 17th century
- Original instruments found: Woodham Mortimer Hall, Essex, 1813
- Pelvic curve: André Levret, 1747
- Kept as a family secret: For more than a century

## Requires

- [Steel](https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/steel/): Iron with just enough carbon (c. 1,000 BCE)
- [Surgical instruments](https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/surgical-instruments/): Tools to cut, grasp, explore and stop bleeding (c. 1,750 BCE)

## Sources

- [Instrumental delivery: complex paternity and fading art](https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10048465/), Eric Jauniaux, John M. Thorp, BJOG (2017), UCL Discovery
- [Forceps: a brief history](https://hekint.org/2017/01/27/forceps-a-brief-history/), Hektoen International (2017)
- [Hugh Chamberlen (Munk's Roll)](https://history.rcp.ac.uk/inspiring-physicians/hugh-chamberlen), Royal College of Physicians
- [Copy of obstetrical crotchet, original dated c. 1580–1620](https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co96260/copy-of-obstetrical-crotchet-original-dated-c-1580-1620-obstetrical-crotchet), Science Museum Group
- [Why Male Midwives Concealed the Obstetric Forceps](https://daily.jstor.org/why-male-midwives-concealed-the-obstetric-forceps), JSTOR Daily
- [Forceps, obstetrical, Levret, steel, French, second half 18th century (A500330)](https://collection.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/co95087/obstetrical-forceps-france-1751-1800-obstetrical-forceps), Science Museum Group
- [Model of obstetrical forceps, first type designed by André Levret (1703–1780) in 1747](https://works.wellcomecollection.org/works/y3wczbs2), Wellcome Collection
- [Tarnier's axis traction forceps with detachable handle](https://collection.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/co96579), Science Museum Group
- [Forceps (Obstetrics simplified)](https://www.gfmer.ch/Obstetrics_simplified/forceps.htm), Geneva Foundation for Medical Education and Research
- [Vacuum-assisted vaginal delivery (Reviews in Obstetrics and Gynecology 2, 2009, pp. 5–17)](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2672989/), Unzila A. Ali, Errol R. Norwitz
- [William Smellie, man-midwife](https://heritageblog.rcpsg.ac.uk/2014/02/20/william-smellie-man-midwife/), Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, heritage blog
- [A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Midwifery (1752–1764), by William Smellie](https://embryo.asu.edu/handle/10776/11495), Embryo Project Encyclopedia, Arizona State University
- [A note from the collection: the Chamberlen family secret](https://imss.org/2018/10/a-note-from-the-collection-the-chamberlen-family-secret/), International Museum of Surgical Science

Fact-checked on 2026-10-19.

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