Strange Sounds -Feb 11, 2021
When you see a chainsaw hacking down a tree, the thought probably furthest from your mind is “I bet that would work well for childbirthâ€.
Well, get ready to think that forevermore, because it turns out that chainsaws were first designed for hacking away at genitals, before being applied to oak.
Childbirth may not always be easy today, but in a time before nitrous oxide, sanitation, and our good friend copious amounts of morphine, it was significantly worse.
The world’s first chainsaw was a flexible saw based on a watch chain with teeth that were moved around with a hand-crank. Now, rather than look down and see a doctor cutting away at your pelvis, you could look down and see the far more reassuring sight of a doctor furiously cranking a chainsaw like they were sharpening a pencil.
The truly horrific part of this is that somebody going to town on your nether regions with a chainsaw was actually a vast improvement. The device, finally produced in 1806, went on to be used for removing diseased joints and was eventually mechanized.
It wasn’t until 1905 that somebody thought of this horror device and decided to apply it to trees.
More:
https://strangesounds.org/2021/02/chainsaw-invented-for-childbirth-video.html
