Delivery of an infant via an abdominal and uterine incision has a very long history. It is impossible to discover when the first such operation was performed, but it is known to have been practised in ancient Roman, Hindu and Egyptian civilisations. Usually it was performed on a recently dead mother in the hope of saving the infant, but there is also some evidence that in ancient times it may occasionally have been attempted on living mothers. In more recent centuries, there are several reports of caesarean sections being performed on living patients in Europe from 1500 onwards. The date of the first successful operation is uncertain, but there is no doubt that mortality of both mothers and infants was very high. In the British Isles, out of 131 caesarean sections performed between 1737 and 1878, only 23 mothers survived. The high maternal mortality was not surprising considering that there was no anaesthesia nor effective control of infection, and the uterine incision was not closed.