The surgical breaking or crushing of the skull, historically used as an obstetric procedure to extract a dead fetus.
From Greek 'kranion' (skull) + 'klasis' (breaking/fracturing). This term dates to medieval obstetrics when complications during childbirth required desperate surgical interventions.
This brutal-sounding procedure actually represents how obstetrics has evolved—it was a lifesaving last resort when modern interventions like cesarean section didn't exist, showing both medical ingenuity and suffering of earlier eras.
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