Anomalies and Curiosities of MedicineGould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Science
Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
Gould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Abnormalities, Human; Medicine -- Anecdotes
A most wonderful case of endurance of pain and heroism was one
occurring in Italy, which attracted much European comment at the time.
A young woman, illegitimately pregnant, at full term, on March 28th, at
dawn, opened her own abdomen on the left side with a common knife such
as is generally used in kitchens. The wound measured five inches, and
was directed obliquely outward and downward. She opened the uterus in
the same direction, and endeavored to extract the fetus. To expedite
the extraction, she drew out an arm and amputated it, and finding the
extraction still difficult, she cut off the head and completely emptied
the womb, including the placenta. She bound a tight bandage around her
body and hid the fetus in a straw mattress. She then dressed herself
and attended to her domestic duties. She afterward mounted a cart and
went into the city of Viterbo, where she showed her sister a cloth
bathed in blood as menstrual proof that she was not pregnant. On
returning home, having walked five hours, she was seized with an attack
of vomiting and fainted. The parents called Drs. Serpieri and Baliva,
who relate the case. Thirteen hours had elapsed from the infliction of
the wound, through which the bulk of the intestines had been protruding
for the past six hours. The abdomen was irrigated, the toilet made, and
after the eighteenth day the process of healing was well progressed,
and the woman made a recovery after her plucky efforts to hide her
shame.
Cases like the foregoing excite no more interest than those on record
in which an abdominal section has been accidental, as, for instance, by
cattle-horns, and the fetus born through the wound. Zuboldie speaks of
a case in which a fetus was born from the wound made by a bull's horn
in the mother's abdomen. Deneux describes a case in which the wound
made by the horn was not sufficiently large to permit the child's
escape, but it was subsequently brought through the opening. Pigne
speaks of a woman of thirty-eight, who in the eighth month of her sixth
pregnancy was gored by a bull, the horn effecting a transverse wound 27
inches long, running from one anterior spine to the other. The woman
was found cold and insensible and with an imperceptible pulse. The
small intestines were lying between the thighs and covered with
coagulated blood. In the process of cleansing, a male child was
expelled spontaneously through a rent in the uterus. The woman was
treated with the usual precautions and was conscious at midday. In a
month she was up. She lived twenty years without any inconvenience
except that due to a slight hernia on the left side. The child died at
the end of a fortnight.
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