Anomalies and Curiosities of MedicineGould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Science
Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
Gould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Abnormalities, Human; Medicine -- Anecdotes
There is a report from Canada of the birth of 4 living children at one
time. The mother, a woman of thirty-eight, of small stature, weighing
100 pounds, had 4 living children of the ages of twelve, ten, eight,
and seven years, respectively. She had aborted at the second month, and
at full term was delivered of 2 males, weighing, respectively, 4 pounds
9 1/4 ounces and 4 pounds 3 ounces; and of 2 females, weighing 4 pounds
3 ounces and 3 pounds 13 3/4 ounces, respectively. There was but one
placenta, and no more exhaustion or hemorrhage than at a single birth.
The father weighed 169 pounds, was forty-one years old, and was 5 feet
5 inches tall, healthy and robust. The Journal of St. Petersburg, a
newspaper of the highest standard, stated that at the end of July,
1871, a Jewish woman residing in Courland gave birth to 4 girls, and
again, in May, 1872, bore 2 boys and a girl; the mother and the 7
children, born within a period of ten months, were doing well at the
time of the report. In the village of Iwokina, on May 26, 1854, the
wife of a peasant bore 4 children at a birth, all surviving. Bousquet
speaks of a primiparous mother, aged twenty-four, giving birth to 4
living infants, 3 by the breech and 1 by the vertex, apparently all in
one bag of membranes. They were nourished by the help of 3 wet-nurses.
Bedford speaks of 4 children at a birth, averaging 5 pounds each, and
all nursing the mother.
Quintuplets are quite rare, and the Index Catalogue of the Surgeon
General's Library, U. S. A., gives only 19 cases, reports of a few of
which will be given here, together with others not given in the
Catalogue, and from less scientific though reliable sources. In the
year 1731 there was one case of quintuplets in Upper Saxony and another
near Prague, Bohemia. In both of these cases the children were all
christened and had all lived to maturity. Garthshore speaks of a
healthy woman, Margaret Waddington, giving birth to 5 girls, 2 of which
lived; the 2 that lived weighed at birth 8 pounds 12 ounces and 9
pounds, respectively. He discusses the idea that woman was meant to
bear more than one child at a birth, using as his argument the
existence of the double nipple and mamma, to which might be added the
not infrequent occurrence of polymazia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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