Anomalies and Curiosities of MedicineGould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Science
Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
Gould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Abnormalities, Human; Medicine -- Anecdotes
In a very exhaustive article Harris of Philadelphia has collected
nearly all the remaining cases on record, and brief extracts from some
of them will be given below. In Zaandam, Holland, 1647, a farmer's wife
was tossed by a furious bull. Her abdomen was ripped open, and the
child and membranes escaped. The child suffered no injuries except a
bruised upper lip and lived nine months. The mother died within forty
hours of her injuries. Figure 19 taken from an engraving dated 1647,
represents an accouchement by a mad bull, possibly the same case. In
Dillenberg, Germany, in 1779, a multipara was gored by an ox at her
sixth month of pregnancy; the horn entered the right epigastric region,
three inches from the linea alba, and perforated the uterus. The right
arm of the fetus protruded; the wound was enlarged and the fetus and
placenta delivered. Thatcher speaks of a woman who was gored by a cow
in King's Park, and both mother and child were safely delivered and
survived.
In the Parish of Zecoytia, Spain, in 1785, Marie Gratien was gored by
an ox in the superior portion of her epigastrium, making a wound eight
inches long which wounded the uterus in the same direction. Dr. Antonio
di Zubeldia and Don Martin Monaco were called to take charge of the
case. While they were preparing to effect delivery by the vagina, the
woman, in an attack of singultus, ruptured the line of laceration and
expelled the fetus, dead. On the twenty-first day the patient was doing
well. The wound closed at the end of the sixteenth week. The woman
subsequently enjoyed excellent health and, although she had a small
ventral hernia, bore and nursed two children.
Marsh cites the instance of a woman of forty-two, the mother of eight
children, who when eight months pregnant was horned by a cow. Her
clothes were not torn, but she felt that the child had slipped out, and
she caught it in her dress. She was seen by some neighbors twelve yards
from the place of accident, and was assisted to her house. The bowels
protruded and the child was separated from the funis. A physician saw
the woman three-quarters of an hour afterward and found her pulseless
and thoroughly exhausted. There was considerable but not excessive loss
of blood, and several feet of intestine protruded through the wound.
The womb was partially inverted through the wound, and the placenta was
still attached to the inverted portion. The wound in the uterus was
Y-shaped. The mother died in one and a half hours from the reception of
her injuries, but the child was uninjured.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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