_Fracture of the parietal bone_ may even be produced, a fact of which practitioners, till lately, have not been sufficiently aware; and cases have occurred where children have been born dead, with the head greatly distorted, and one of the bones fractured, from which circumstances the mothers have been suspected of infanticide. Dr. Michaelis, of Kiel, has lately reported an interesting case of this kind, where the fracture seems to have resulted from the great immobility of the coccyx. The head was much disfigured, and on examining it the frontal bones were uninjured, but so flattened that the frontal and parietal portions of the sagittal suture lay nearly in the same place; the fontanelle and anterior two-thirds of the sagittal suture projected high up, and the sagittal borders of the parietal bones were firm and well formed. In the posterior third of the sagittal suture, where the parietal bones were firm and well formed, and the suture only two lines in width, were seen small livid portions of the longitudinal sinus forced between the bones. The occipital bone was flattened and forced deep under the parietal bones, but not otherwise injured. The right parietal bone, which during birth had been turned towards the promontory of the sacrum, was covered anteriorly and superiorly with effused blood, and on removing the periosteum, was found fractured in five places. (_Neue Zeitschrift für Geburtskunde_, vol. iv. part 3. 1836.[124]) Where the action of the uterus is not very violent, and the bones yielding, the head gradually adapts itself to the form of the passage without destroying the foetus; it elongates itself more and more until it is enabled to pass, so that after a tedious labour of this sort, we sometimes find the configuration of the head remarkably altered. Baudelocque, has mentioned a case recorded by Solayres de Renhac, where the head was so elongated that the long diameter measured eight inches all but two lines, the transverse being only two inches and five or six lines.