Meet the Birth Centrifuge
Or to use its more accurate name, the Apparatus For Facilitating The Birth Of A Child By Centrifugal Force, patented by George B and Charlotte E Blosnky in 1965.
You wondering "Surely this isn't an elaborate centrifuge where you whirl the patient round and round until you make the baby fly out? Surely?"
That's exactly what it is (and stop calling us Shirley).
As is the format for patent documentation, George B and Charlotte E Blosnky begin by explaining why the world needs a birth centrifuge. Apparently the foetus needs "considerable propelling force" to leave the body. The Blonskys say that "Primitive peoples" have the muscle and skeletal system to supply this while "Civilized Women" do not, so it's a racist birth centrifuge, too.
The way the contraption is supposed to work is this: "When the gynecologist decides that the most opportune time for childbirth has arrived", you are strapped supine to a stretcher at the head, legs and feet. The stretcher is then loaded up into the centrifuge. It then gets spun round and round at an alarming speed until the baby comes out.
The Blonskys are cagey about the appropriate speed at which a foetus would be "dislodged" (their word). At one point they mention around 8gs, then conclude that would probably be a bit much and suggest starting at around 2gs and going up from there.
In a supine position, a human would black out with in a few minutes at 2gs, and quicker at a faster speed. The Blonskys are well aware of this, and that the birth will therefore have to be achieved by centrifuging alone. They don't see this as a problem, because they have supreme confidence in their birth centrifuge.
At this point, we should point out that the speed at which you'd have to centrifuge someone to make their baby fly out has never been tested. It's uncharted science. There isn't really any data to show whether or not, when exposed to particular g-forces, things will go flying out of the human pelvis.
To prove or refute the concept of the birth centrifuge, can any astronauts, pilots or others who have had high-g training tell us if they let out a bit of wee or poo when you were in the centrifuge?
Anyway, enough about the poor soul strapped into this thing. What happens to the baby? Do you have midwives on hand with lacrosse sticks? Don't worry, it doesn't go flying across the room! There's a net to catch it. There's even a little bit of cotton wadding to prevent it being slammed into any machinery.
The net still raises unpleasant questions as a newborn baby's skull bones aren't fused yet so being accelerated into a net probably isn't good for its head.
Also, the Blonskys don't tell us what's supposed to happen to the placenta. Does it slam straight into the baby from behind?
The biggest question, we suppose, is why?
According to the story behind their design, the Blonskys - husband and wife - had visited the zoo and seen an elephant twirling in circles. A zookeeper explained to them elephants do this before giving birth.
Which, by the way, they don't, because centrifugal force isn't necessary for birth.
So maybe it's an elaborate piece of art critiquing the medicalisation of birth rather than a cursed doohickey conceived from zero understanding of the human anatomy. If so, the Blonskys played a blinder, as the patent documentation is delivered entirely straight-faced and with huge attention to detail.
Unsurprisingly, the birth centrifuge never went into production. The achievements of the Blonskys were recognised in 1999 with a posthumous Ig Nobel Prize for Managed Health Care.
