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"The difference between the most precocious and the most protracted gestation amounts here to seventy-seven days, or two months and a half. From his table, Brugnone concludes that the gestation is not complete in less than one year, and that, when it goes beyond that term, there is no fixed period."-P. 233.

M. Tessier found that in the gestation of 200 mares, there was a latitude of eighty-three days.-P. 239.

The Journal d'Economie rurale Belge, 1829, finds a minimum of 322 days, a mean of 347 days, and a maximum term of 419 days; difference, ninety-seven days.-P. 234.

M. Grille's statement, Mém. de la Société Industrielle d'Angers, No. 2, 11e année, p. 55, shows in 114 mares a difference in gestation of ninety-three days.-P. 239.

The observations made by order of Earl Spencer, as to the gestation of 764 cows, show that the shortest period of gestation is 220 days, though the ordinary duration is of 284 or 285 days.-P. 235.

Among sixty-five sows, two littered on the 104th day; ten from the 110th to the 115th; twenty-three from the 115th to the 120th; twentyseven from the 120th to the 125th; two on the 126th, and one on the 127th day. This is a latitude of twenty-three days.

M. Rainard further gives, from the Bulletin de la Société Industrielle d'Angers, the following statement of the duration of gestation in 154 rabbits, viz: one littered on the 27th day; seven from the 28th to the 29th; fifty-three on the 30th; sixty-one on the 31st; and twenty-nine from the 32d to the 34th day.

These statements show with sufficient clearness that the duration of gestation is by no means a fixed term in any of the observed genera, and I should suppose that the least reflection might lead one to the same conclusion, since the nature of the womb, as well as that of the child, is such as to render it impossible that the laws that govern the contractility of the one or the rate of development of the other, should operate in all cases in equal times and force. The womb of one individual, as well as the foetus within it, may be act of parturition earlier or later, according to the force of a variety of causes to the operation of which they are subject.

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The duration of gestation must bear some necessary relation to the mass of the foetus to be developed. Yet, in the elephant, the young at birth stands only about three feet high, which is not higher than the new fallen calf or foal, though the weight must be far greater. In this animal, the gestation lasts twenty months, according to the showing of Mr. Corse Scott, who had one born of a dam in his possession in India. He noted that the gestation commenced about the

1st July, 1793, and terminated about the 1st April, 1795. An account of this elephant may be found in the Brit. Cyclop. of Nat. History.

Professor Asdrubali, in his account of the thirteen months' gestation of the Signora N., cites the following passage from Spigelius, who, in speaking of the causes of labor, or of the completion of pregnancy, says: "Hæc nulla alia esse potest, quam maturatio, et perfectio foetus, quæ fit in utero incerto tempore et variis interdum mensibus, ob facultates corpus foetus gubernantes vel debiliores vel robustiores."

The same author, Asdrubali, in his Trattato Generale di Ostetricia Teoretica é Practica, tom. v., gives us a succinct relation of the preg nancy and confinement of the lady, the Signora N., who carried twins in the womb over thirteen months.

Probably so great an extension of the uterine life of the foetuses may excite the reader to feel surprise, and even to a denial of the facts of that case. But I should think that that elegant and learned Scholar, who gives us the history of the pregnancy, ought to be held worthy of our confidence; and I believe it would be difficult to read his fifth volume, which is devoted to the examination of the subject of protracted pregnancy, without being convinced, not only of the sincerity, but of the truthfulness of the author. And it seems to me a very desirable thing that that case should be fully reported in the works on medical jurisprudence for the better information of our courts and juries. I shall at least make an abstract of it in this place.

Case. The lady, aged 26 years, was married on the 15th of April, 1793. She became pregnant in March, 1795, after having been married 21 months. The child, which was born in December of the same year, died on the 8th day. About the 1st of March, 1796, she was affected with symptoms which induced her to suppose she had again conceived. On the 13th of the same month, she removed to a neighboring district. Upon returning to her residence, she was shocked to find her husband, who was a nobleman, ill with a disease of which he died on the 22d of the same month. To the grief occasioned by the loss of her spouse were added great distress and embarrassment connected with the inheritance of his estate, and notwithstanding she early declared the existence of her pregnancy, she was much tormented and baffled by the relatives of her deceased husband, who treated her declaration of pregnancy as false. At the beginning of the fourth month of gestation, she perceived the quickening in the womb. Throughout the fifth and part of the sixth month, the movement in the womb was so violent as to have the appearance of constant con

vulsive action. Towards the end of the sixth month the motion almost wholly ceased. The abdomen appeared to be cold; the breasts became hard, and there was a discharge resembling whey from the nipples. It was about this time that her family quarrels, insults, and disappointments became most aggravated, and in this condition she passed through the sixth, seventh, and eighth months. At the commencement of the ninth month, she was seized with pains like laborpains, and discharged from the womb a great quantity of watery fluid. The pains continued to recur during eight consecutive days. They now ceased, as well as the watery discharges, and the lady again began to feel the motions of the fruit of the womb, while the lower belly again recovered its feeling of warmth. The abdomen, which had ceased to grow, resumed its process of development. The breasts ceased to flow, and became flaccid. During the tenth and eleventh months, she experienced a sense of weight in the hypogaster, and had difficulty and pain in the act of urinating. In the course of the twelfth and thirteenth months, she was assailed, first every eight and then every fifteen days, with pains like those she had felt in the beginning of the ninth month. These pains lasted sometimes four and sometimes five hours alternately. On the 22d of April, 1797, she was attacked with symptoms of labor, and on the 29th gave birth to twins. The gestation seems to have continued from March 1, 1796, to April 22, 1797, a period of thirteen months and twenty-two days.

Such is a compendious relation of the case, of which the particulars are given in a long detail by Prof. Asdrubali. I lay it before the Student with the assurance that I cordially accept the story of the accomplished author, and that, notwithstanding it presents a rare example of procrastination of the Term, I find in it nothing impossible to believe, the more particularly as I have confidence in the correctness of the following statement of a case that fell under my own clinical care.

Having admitted the patient to my ward in the Pennsylvania Hospital, and having observed and attended her up to and in her accouchement, I rely on the facts as trustworthy.

Case.-Saturday, August 1, 1840. Being at the Pennsylvania Hospital, a lady came to me, and requested that, as a medical officer of the House, I would see A. G-n, in Clark Street, Southwark, in order to her admission into the Lying-in ward. I was told that her confinement, which had been looked for in April, had not yet taken place, that she was suffering under the effects of this unnatural preg nancy, and that the neighbors thought she ought to receive the cares

of the Institution. Upon proceeding to Clark Street, I learned that she was twenty-six years of age, that she had been confined in the Pennsylvania Hospital on the 18th of February, 1839, and was again pregnant in the month of July, 1839, while suckling her son. Being very much indisposed, she called a physician, who directed her to wean the child, as she was doubtless pregnant. She did not, however, wean him until September, when she felt sure of her pregnancy. On the 20th of November she quickened, and her husband very distinctly perceived the motion of the child at Christmas. On or about the 10th day of April, 1840, being very large and lusty, she was taken in the night with the symptoms of labor, and called in her neighbors. She said the waters broke in the night, and wetted her profusely. After the rupture of the membranes, the pains were great, and she supposed the child would be soon born; but as the pains not long afterwards grew easier, she did not send for the doctor till morning; at that time, they had become much less distressing; in short, they gradually left her: but she continued big, and could daily, and even now, feel the child when it moved, which gave her great pain.

She was laboring under a decided hectical fever and irritation, that had already very much reduced her flesh and strength. She obtained but little sleep, and had a poor appetite. She daily suffered acute pains in the abdomen. I gave her a ticket for the Lying-in department, to come in on the 4th day of August. The os uteri was found to be not dilated, though the cervix was fully developed, having lost entirely its tubular or cylindrical form. The form of the abdominal tumor was conical, the umbilicus being at the apex of the cone. Two or three inches above the umbilicus was the commencement of an oblong tumor, extending to within a very short distance of the xiphoid cartilage, and about three inches in width by two in height. This was a hernia produced by the separation of the linea alba, through which protruded a quantity of the intestine, thinly covered, and restrained by the peritoneum and skin.

She remained in the ward, suffering daily and nightly with abdominal pains, until she fell into labor on the 11th of September, and the child was born on the 13th of September, about daylight. I sat up with her all night, being deeply interested to observe all the phenomena of the case.

The child, a male, was of a medium size, weighing seven or eight pounds; in good health. The labor was extremely tedious and distressing. She had a pretty good getting up, but the hernia of the linea alba caused great weakness, which was in a measure relieved

by a truss made expressly for her. She was discharged October 11th,

1840.

Of course, in relating this case, I do not consider myself responsible for the truth of its statements further than as they are worthy of confidence in view of the character of the patient herself, and as the facts came under my notice. She had the appearance of perfect candor and sincerity in all that she said about it, and I have no doubt she thinks her pregnancy began in July, 1839, and ended, as I have said, on the 13th of September, 1840, having endured near fourteen months, or four hundred and twenty days, instead of two hundred and eighty, the usual term of a pregnancy.

In July, 1841, she is pregnant again, and still suffers from the protrusion in the upper part of the linea alba.

Lamotte, t. i. 313, Obs. xci., relates the case of Madame de who had had children of former pregnancies, and who conceived in the month of January, during which she experienced all the inconvenient sensations to which she had been accustomed in antecedent gestations. In the middle of May, she quickened at the same period as on other occasions. She made her computations for the term for September. Supposing herself about to be confined, she summoned the monthly nurse, who remained near her until the labor terminated by the birth of a child much larger than the other children had been. She was delivered of the child at the beginning of February, making a case of gestation protracted through thirteen months.

Dr. Merriman, of London, has published, in vol. xiii. part. ii. of the London Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, a paper on the Period of Par turition, which contains an interesting table of the births of one hun dred and fourteen mature children, calculated from, but not including, the day on which the catamenia were last distinguishable.

By this table it appears that three were born in the thirty-seventh week, thirteen in the thirty-eighth week, fourteen in the thirty-ninth week, thirty-three in the fortieth week, twenty-two in the forty-first week, fifteen in the forty-second week, ten in the forty-third week, and four in the forty-fourth week, of which latter, one was born at three hundred and three days, one at three hundred and five days, and two at three hundred and six days.

Dr. Merriman states that he has calculated a great many more cases in the same manner, but has restricted his table to the above one hun dred and fourteen cases, because he was able completely to verify them. The others gave results so nearly similar, that he has no doubt of the general correctness of the principle he desired to enforce, which was, that conception takes place, in general, soon after the cessation of the

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