Anomalies and Curiosities of MedicineGould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Science
Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
Gould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Abnormalities, Human; Medicine -- Anecdotes
Barker gives the instance of a woman who, on being abused by her
husband after a previous tedious labor, resolved to free herself of the
child, and slyly made an incision five inches long on the left side of
the abdomen with a weaver's knife. When Barker arrived the patient was
literally drenched with blood and to all appearance dead. He extracted
a dead child from the abdomen and bandaged the mother, who lived only
forty hours. In his discourses on Tropical Diseases Moseley speaks of a
young negress in Jamaica who opened her uterus and extracted therefrom
a child which lived six days; the woman recovered. Barker relates
another case in Rensselaer County, N.Y., in which the incision was made
with the razor, the woman likewise recovering. There is an interesting
account of a poor woman at Prischtina, near the Servian frontier, who,
suffering greatly from the pains of labor, resolved to open her abdomen
and uterus. She summoned a neighbor to sew up the incision after she
had extracted the child, and at the time of report, several months
later, both the mother and child were doing well.
Madigan cites the case of a woman of thirty-four, in her seventh
confinement, who, while temporarily insane, laid open her abdomen with
a razor, incised the uterus, and brought out a male child. The
abdominal wound was five inches long, and extended from one inch above
the umbilicus straight downward. There was little or no bleeding and
the uterus was firmly contracted. She did not see a physician for three
hours. The child was found dead and, with the placenta, was lying by
her side. The neighbors were so frightened by the awful sight that they
ran away, or possibly the child might have been saved by ligature of
the funis. Not until the arrival of the clergyman was anything done,
and death ultimately ensued.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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