Chloroform, the dernier cri of obstetrics at the time, was sent to Berlin from England especially for the new obstetric method of “intermittent narcosis”. During short periods of anesthesia, the narcotic was administered to those giving birth to provide relief and gather new strength. It had helped Queen Victoria of England wonderfully during her births, and now it was also to assist her daughter “Vicky”, Princess Victoria of Prussia, during the birth of her child. But things were to turn out differently. Victoria’s personal physicians had diagnosed the baby’s breech presentation too late, so that an external cephalic version was no longer possible. The director of the Maternity Hospital at the Charité, Prof. Eduard Arnold Martin, was hastily summoned to the Crown Prince’s Palace. As Victoria was suffering from unusually severe pain, it was decided to anesthetize her continuously, for hours on end. However, the anesthesia reduced the strength of the contractions, so Martin administered ergot three times during the expulsion phase. The high dosage over-stimulated the uterus, causing the neck, head and umbilical cord to become clamped in the birth canal, and restricting the blood and oxygen supply; the boy’s life was in acute danger. Martin and the assisting doctors only had a few minutes left to save the child. The infant, William, was dragged into the world “under the flannel skirt [of his mother] with all the strength that could be mustered” using the Mauriceau-Veit-Smellie maneuver for arm release and head delivery by neck flexion. In the process, his left brachial plexus was torn off [1, 2].