Who invented Cesarean?

Answer 1

I thought the cesaerean was first performed on Cleopatra to deliver her son Cesarion (hence the term "cesarean").

But, wikipedia has other ideas.... In any case, the practice has been around a while but has never been as prevalent as it is today.

There are three theories about the origin of the name: # The name for the procedure is said to derive from a Roman legal code called "Lex Caesarea", which allegedly contained a law prescribing that the baby be cut out of its mother's womb in the case that she dies before giving birth.[6] (The Merriam-Webster dictionary is unable to trace any such law; but "Lex Caesarea" might mean simply "imperial law" rather than a specific statute of Julius Caesar.) # The derivation of the name is also often attributed to an ancient story, told in the first century A.D. by Pliny the Elder, which claims that an ancestor of Caesar was delivered in this manner.[7] # An alternative etymology suggests that the procedure's name derives from the Latin verb caedere (supine stem caesum), "to cut," in which case the term "Caesarean section" is redundant. Proponents of this view consider the traditional derivation to be a false etymology, though the supposed link with Julius Caesar has clearly influenced the spelling. (A corollary suggesting that Julius Caesar himself derived his name from the operation is refuted by the fact that the cognomen "Caesar" had been used in the Julii family for centuries before his birth,[8] and the Historia Augusta cites three possible sources for the name Caesar, none of which have to do with Caesarean sections or the root word caedere.)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesarean_section