Historic landmarks of perinatal medicine in obstetrics.

Until 25 years ago the only possible way of communicating with the "intrauterine" inmate apart from the fetal movements observed by the mother herself, was by auscultation of the fetal heart beats with a simple stethoscope. The following statement made by the two English pediatricians DOBBS and GAIRDNER in 1966 sums up the situation [23]. "Up to now the formidable inaccessibility of the human foetus has meant that foetal medicine (apart perhaps from foetal electrocardiography) has virtually not existed. In an age when man has been able to measure most things from an atom to a galaxy, it is thus paradoxical that to measure his own size during the most critical and precarious period of his life, he still has to depend upon the extreme fallibility of the palpating hand." Systematic exploration of the intrauterine space during pregnancy did not start until the 1960s. This is why we consider this period as the beginning of perinatal medicine.