We Are Silently Screaming About the Reason Chainsaws Were Invented — Trees Were Not Involved!

In one of the best cities in America, there exists one of the strangest museums there ever was. The Pharmacy Museum in New Orleans is by far and away one of the most fascinating looks at medical history that one can saunter through. If you're interested in tampons that were once soaked in cocaine or previously prescribed medications that were definitely killing people, then this is the place for you.

In order to get where we are today in terms of medicine, we absolutely had to do things like perform orbital lobotomies. Well, we probably didn't have to do lobotomies, but you get what we're saying. Sadly, before doctors could run through things like heart transplants, they had to crawl through things like the tobacco smoke enema. This leads us to why they invented chainsaws. Sadly it had very little to do with trees and far too much to do with pelvic bones. Let's get into it.

According to the BBC's Science Focus magazine, chainsaws were originally invented in order to facilitate childbirth. Despite all of our medical advances, giving birth can still be a very dangerous thing for both the mother and the baby. Any number of things can go wrong that most doctors were ill-equipped to deal with since male doctors started getting in the way around 1760. Before that, skilled midwives oversaw childbirth, per WHYY.

A couple of decades after male doctors pushed midwives out of the birthing rooms, two Scottish doctors designed a tool that would aide in the removal of obstructive bone on the pelvis. John Aitken and James Jeffray used it to "cut away flesh, cartilage, and bone from the mother during childbirth if the baby became stuck in the birth canal," per Science Focus. Eventually this gave birth to (see what we did there) the modern chainsaw we're more familiar with today.

Somehow TikTok stumbled upon the reason chainsaws were invented, and a trend of people recording themselves before and after googling it was born. These birth puns are simply never going to stop. If you don't like them, you can C-section your way out. The videos are mostly women looking absolutely terrified by the reveal. They aren't wrong!

Perhaps we are just too invested in medical curiosities and scientific flubs to be as shocked by what others are learning. If you're really looking to lose some sleep, google trepanation of the skull. For now, let's leave you with the best reaction on TikTok. It comes from a British man who goes by @richardslittlediary. The accent certainly helps.

As he's typing the words, Richard says, "Oh my God, it's already there." He pauses the video, and returns a changed man. "Naw man," says Richard. "Not only do women have to go through pregnancy which is stupid painful, right? I can't keep on reading. I can't do this. I hope I'm raising some sort of awareness because I've not got a clue." Richard calls his girlfriend in who just says "F--- off" upon reading what he just read. "Mate, you girls have got it rough," concludes Richard. From the mouths of Brits!