Thomas Denman (physician)

Thomas Denman (physician)

Thomas Denman, the elder, M.D. (1733–1815) was an English physician. He was the second son of John Denman (or Thomas), an apothecary born at Bakewell, Derbyshire, on 27 June 1733. After a career in naval medicine he made a considerable amount of money in midwifery. The phenomenon of Denman's spontaneous evolution, by which a spontaneous impaction of the shoulder of a foetus resolves a difficult transverse delivery during childbirth, is named after him. He used his authority to support inducing premature labour in cases of narrow pelvis and other conditions in England (where the mother's life is imperiled by delivery at the full-time).