[The sabbatical year of a young French gynecologist-obstetrician in 1880].

During the year 1880, a young French gynecologist travelled through European countries, mostly in England, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. He was then able to listen to the teachings and to admire the dexterity of the most famous obstetricians and gynecologists of the time. In London, Spencer Wells in his operating room was surrounded by a listerian "carbolic fog" like the Thames's dickensian one. Alfred Hegar in Freiburg-in-Brisgau advocated bilateral castration in the treatment of myomatous hemorrhage. Breisky in Prague demonstrated the technic of Porro's cesarean hysterectomy. Olshausen in Halle supported the use of vaginal hysterectomy and Freund in Strasburg was the pioneer of abdominal complete hysterectomy for uterine cancer. Robert Barnes in London performed the tracheoplasty described by Marion Sims in 1861. Puerperal sepsis was at this time a great and frequent danger and, in Vienna, the old masters who rejected Semmelweis's theory explaining contagion and transmission of septic germs were still present. The young doctor visited Matthews Barnes in London, famous for his theory on the mechanism of placental expulsion, Hegar and his sign of early pregnancy and his dilators, Olshansen and his theory of rotation of the fetal head, Peter Müller in Bern and his maneuver for evaluating the cephalopelvic relationship (known also in the U.S. as Müller-Hillis maneuver), Theodor Langhans, also in Bern, who described three years ago his famous placental cells, Frankenhaüser in Zurich, the man of the plexiform ganglion of the parametrium, discovered before in 1842 by Robert Lee of Scotland. Last but not least, the visitor was astonished by some beds made of straw, burnt after the mothers were dismissed from the hospital, for keeping out dangers of contagion, by the student midwives so respectful that they kissed the hand of the Professor...and by the regular attendance of the students at the lessons. Among them, in Munich, was a friend of the young Frenchman, a Bavarian "Student Prince" as in the famous Sigmund Romberg musical comedy. After all, an operating room is, as you like it or not, a real stage with merely players... the best one being the patient. Perhaps Shakespeare would have thought so!