In mythology Zeus is supposed to have torn the premature Dionysus from the abdomen of his dead mistress Semele and implanted him into his own thigh and Apollo is supposed to have killed his mistress and while she was lying on the pyre removed his unborn son Aesculapius. Caesarian section is the method by which the great Roman emperor Julius Caesar is said to have been born in 102 BC.Many people refute this and attribute it to a Roman law which said that a child should be removed from its mother if she dies in childbirth.The Mishnah the first large commentary on the Hebrew bible in the second century mentions the operation several times.
Jacob Nufer in AD 1500 cut open his wife and delivered the baby with his wifes survival.
In Shakespeare's play Macbeth, Macbeths enemy MacDuff was said to have been born by caesarian.

MACBETH:"I bear a charmed life which must not yield to one woman borne,"
MACDUFF:"Dispaire thy charm
And let the angell whom thou still has't served.
Tell thee, MacDuff was from his mothers womb
Untimely ript."

The operation remained a desperate act until the advent of antiseptic surgical technique and was first promoted as a safe procedure by Sanger in 1882. The modern procedure which involves opening the lower part of the womb was developed in the 1920s. In the UK about 1 in ten babies are delivered by caesarian section.