Life, birth, and live-birth : a medico-legal study / by Stanley B. Atkinson.

  • Atkinson, Stanley Bean.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Life, birth, and live-birth : a medico-legal study / by Stanley B. Atkinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    27/34 page 21
    tingency. An estate did not vest in the widower (cited in Baines case, 1587) where a living child was produced by typical Caesarean section (the only form then known). Coke also states that the land descended to such a child while yet in the womb (8th Report). ‘ Separate existence ’ of the foetus commences in fact simultaneously with the somatic death of the mother: the point might arise in a survivorship claim. Children have thriven who were thus tardily but skilfully extracted after the sudden death of the mother: an ancestor of Julius Caesar, Scipio Africanus, and Manilius (but not Edward VI) are historical; Bacchus, Aesculapius, and Macduff adorn the myths. Under Ethelbert there was a jus vidiiae: ‘ if she bear a quick child, let her have half the husband’s property, if he die first ’ (doom 78). Posthumous children, although neither begotten nor born during the span of a wedlock, may be legitimate. B. Apart from circumstantial evidence, what is the exact nature of the overt act which must be exhibited to afford proof of live-birth, in the theory of the law and in the practice of medicine ? Crying, breathing, pulsations, muscular contractions, ‘ motion, stirring and the like,’ have each in turn been demanded and may here be reduced to their biological significance. Bichat regarded life as ‘ the resistance to death.’ Death results from the permanent cessation of the heart’s action—literal ‘ asystolic asphyxia,’ with consequent stagnation of the unpurified blood: ‘ for the blood is the life.’ The logical postnatal life-test, in civil and in criminal cases alike, is reduced to an examination of the organs concerned with the circulation of the blood. ‘ A man’s life is an appendix to his heart.’ Muscular activity, usually rhythmical and in mammals needing a constant, free, pure blood-supply, is the visible sign of the moving creature that hath life. Most neonatal movements are relative either to the circulatory, or, so long as that is efiicient, to the respiratory function. The belief that the breath of life inspires the living soul, is as ancient as Adam and as modern as to-day’s medical practice. The broad facts of the circulation of the blood, and notably the fact that the child’s cardio-vascular system perpetuates a very similar foetal condition, have been known for less than three centuries and properly appreciated but for one. The embryo, within a month of conception, has as separate and self- contained circulatory mechanism as has the chick within its shell; the embryonic heart, from the earliest throbs of the imnctum saliens, has maintained the foetal blood-stream, which at no stage is con- current nor directly communicating by conduit pipes with the maternal blood-stream. There is no haemostatical continuity between the uterine and
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3