Pathology, diagnosis and treatment of diseases of women : including the diagnosis of pregnancy / by Graily Hewitt.

  • Hewitt, Graily, 1828-1893.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pathology, diagnosis and treatment of diseases of women : including the diagnosis of pregnancy / by Graily Hewitt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    woman bear a child was ten years: he had heard of one at nine. The experience of Dr. Montgomery himself did not furnish him with an instance in which pregnancy commenced earlier than the fourteenth year. Dr. Wilson, of Glasgow, has recorded a case in which conception took place at the age of twelve years and nine months.1 The latest age at which pregnancy has been recorded in this country is fifty-four. The number of cases of pregnancy after the age of forty-five is, however, small. Thus, of ten thousand cases observed at the Manchester and Salford Lying-in Hospital, bv Mr. Roberton, onlv fiftv-one were over forty-live vears of age : the distribution of these being as follows: In the 46th year, 12 cases. In the 50th year, 9 cases. 47th 13 48th 8 49th 6 52d 9 53d 1 54th l2 In a volume not long since issued by the Registrar-General of Scotland are contained certain facts relating to this question which came oat in preparing the Glasgow table. Two women became mothers at the age of fifty-one, four at the age of fifty- two, and one mother was registered as having given birth to a child in the fifty-seventh year of her age.3 In France the possibility of pregnancy at the age of fifty- eight was decided judicially in one case. In this country, in respect to an important case decided in the Court of Chancery, no evidence could be brought forward to the effect that preg- nancy at the age of sixty was possible. Dr. Montgomery declares that no case of pregnaucy has occurred, of the particulars of which he has reason to be satisfied, at an age later than the fifty- fourth year ; but this able authority goes on to state that he by no means pretends to deny the possibility of such occurrences.' Recorded instances of late pregnancy it is right to mention. Thus Devergie quotes a case of pregnancy at fifty-eight. Casper states thatMarsa, a physician in Venice, treated a woman aged sixty, for dropsy, which proved to be pregnancy.4 Capuron cites a case of pregnancy at sixty-five. The cases in which it is especially necessary to be aware of 1 Edinburgh Medical Journal, October, 1861. 2 Roberton, On Physiology and Diseases of Women, etc., p. 188. 3 Times, February 12, 1862. 4Handbuch der gerichtlichen Medicin. Biologisch. Th., Berlin, 1858, p. 104.