Copy 2

The principles and practice of obstetric medicine and surgery, in reference to the process of parturition / [Francis H. Ramsbotham].

  • Ramsbotham, Francis H. (Francis Henry), 1800-1868.
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles and practice of obstetric medicine and surgery, in reference to the process of parturition / [Francis H. Ramsbotham]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    853/868 (page 661)
    a woman, a few years since, of twins, each labouring under spina bifida situated low in the lumbar vertebre. But the most interesting and singular variety of deficient organization is exemplified in what is denominated the acephalous monster. In this there is a total want of the bones at the side and upper part of the cranium, as well as of the brain and the membranes ordinarily covering it. The basis cranit is ill-shaped, and covered by a membrane continuous with the inte- guments. There is no forehead, but the skull runs backwards from the su- perciliary ridge. Sometimes, under the membrane at the base of the skull, there is a quantity of soft pulpy matter ; but more frequently the spinal marrow commences, as it were, abruptly. The preparations of the acephaloid foetus (which have been multiplied ad infinitum, and specimens of which may be found in every museum,) prove that the case is by no means very rare ; and they show also that the brain is not essential to our being while in utero : for many of these children have arrived at the full intra-uterine size—nay, some are actually larger than an ordinary fetus; as if nature had intended to compensate for the loss of the brain by allowing an exuberant growth to the body. In these instances the nerves are well formed, and even those of the senses which ordinarily terminate in the cerebral mass itself—such as the optic—are not wanting. Acephaloid children have been known to live some hours, and even days. I myself saw one alive thirty-six hours after its birth, which cried, (though feebly,) sucked, and seemed to perform all the animal functions much more perfectly than could have been supposed. The spinal marrow has been found wanting in some cases, when the brain was deficient. There is a woman now living. in Double-X Place, Globe Road, Mile End, who has had six children, and each alternate one has been acephalous, the others healthy, and born living. It has been observed by her attendant, that with each of the monstrous foetuses there has been an excessive quantity of liquor amnii; not so, however, with the others. Redundancy of parts.—Organs are not unfrequently redundant: thus oc- casionally there are supernumerary thumbs, fingers, or toes; such an irre- gularity being sometimes confined to one limb, sometimes affecting all. It is evidently both erroneous and unjust to call a child a monster, merely be- cause it possesses a toe or a finger more than the natural number ; for the very word conveys a horrible, or at least an unpleasant, impression. It is worth remark, that this deviation from natural formation sometimes runs in families. Meckel (Pathol. Anatomy, vol. i. p. 19) has observed this ; there is a curious case of the same kind in the fourteenth volume of the Medical Gaz., p. 65; and two similar instances have come under my owneye. Inthe year 1831, two children were brought to my house, twin boys, of a fortnight old, one of them with a supernumerary finger and toe on each hand and foot, the other with only one extra finger on the right hand; the toes had apparently well-formed joints, by which they were connected to the meta- tarsal bones; the fingers merely hung by a pellicle of skin, I saw the