Blast Old Idea That Caesar Was Born by Caesarean Operation TORONTO. Julius Caesar, contrary to widespread belief, was not born by means of a Caesarean operation. Neither did he have anything to do with enactment of the old Roman law that forbade burial of a woman who died In pregnancy before the body of the unborn child had been removed by surgery. The old myth about Caesar and his birth is exploded by Dr. John Harold Couch of Toronto General Gener-al hospital here and Herbert Newell New-ell Couch, assistant professor of Greek at Bro university, Providence, Provi-dence, R. I. Reason for Belief. A reason for the persistent linking link-ing of Caesar's name with the operation op-eration Is given by the Couches In a report to the Journal of the Canadian Ca-nadian Medical Association. The reason Is quite the reverse of the traditional belief. Instead of the operation being named for Caesar, Julius Caesar's family probably got their name from It. The Couches explain It as follows: "It Is altogether probable that some distant ancestor of his was born by means of a Caesarean operation, op-eration, performed on a dead mother, moth-er, and the cognomen of Caesar, which is derived from the verb cae-do, cae-do, to cut, was attached to the newborn new-born child for that reason. Another An-other Roman family, bearing the name Caeso, may have derived their cognomen from the same cause. Such a method of assigning assign-ing names would be entirely In harmony with the early R-oman traditions. tra-ditions. In fact, Pliny Is the authority au-thority for this assumption, for In his Natural History he remarks that certain people were born by en Incision of the mother and that "the first of the Caesars" was said to have been born in this manner."