Natural history -- England -- Wiltshire; Wiltshire (England) -- History
On Tuesday the 25th day of October, Anno Dni 1664, Mary, the wife of
John Waterman, of Fisherton Anger, neer Salisbury, hostler, fell into
travell, and on Wednesday, between one and two in the morning, was
delivered of a female child, with all its parts duly formed. Aboute
halfe an hour after she was delivered of a monstrous birth, having two
heades, the one opposite to the other; the two shoulders had also
[each] two armes, with the hands bearing respectively each against the
other; two feet, &c. About four o’clock in the afternoon it was
christened by the name of Martha and Mary, having two pretty faces, and
lived till Fryday next. The female child first borne, whose name was
Elselet, lived fourteen days, and died the 9th of November following:
the mother then alive and in good health.
[This narrative is accompanied by a description of the internal
structure of the lusus naturæ, as developed in a post mortem
examination; which “accurate account,” says Aubrey, “was made by my
worthy and learned friend Thorn. Guidot, Dr. of Physick, who did kindly
communicate it to me out of his collection of medicinall observations
in Latin.”]
Dr. Wm. Harvey, author of the Circulation of the Blood, told me that
one Mr. Palmer’s wife in Kent did beare a child every day for five
daies together.
A wench being great with child drowned herself in the river Avon,
where, haveing layn twenty-four houres, she was taken up and brought
into the church at Sutton Benger, and layd upon the board, where the
coroner did his office. Mris. Joane Sumner hath often assured me that
the sayd wench did sweat a cold sweat when she lay dead; and that she
severall times did wipe off the sweat from her body, and it would
quickly returne again: and she would have had her opened, because she
did believe that the child was alive within her and might bee saved.
In September 1661 a grave was digged in the church of Hedington for a
widow, where her husband was buried in 1610. In this grave was a
spring; the coffin was found firme; the bodie not rotten, but black;
and in some places white spotts; the lumen was rotten. Mr. Wm. Scott’s
wife of this parish, from whom I have this, saw it, with severall of
her neighbours.
Mrs. Mary Norborne, of Calne, a gentlewoman worthy of belief, told me
that Mr…. White, Lord of Langley’s grave was opened forty years after
he was buried. He lay in water, and his body not perished, and some old
people there remembred him and knew him. He was related to Mrs.
Norborne, and her husband’s brother was minister here, in whose time
this happened.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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