The surgical crushing or breaking of the fetal skull to ease delivery when complications arise.
From Greek 'kephale' (head) + 'klastos' (broken). Medical term for a destructive procedure, now historical and replaced by safer methods like cesarean section.
This brutal obstetric procedure highlights how desperate childbirth complications were before modern medicine—doctors would crush a dead baby's skull to save the mother, a tragic necessity that vanished once cesarean sections became safe.
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