An attempt to prove, on rational principles, that the term of human pregnancy may be considerably extended beyond nine calendar months : comprising the substance of evidence given in the Gardner peerage cause, before the House of Lords, July 4, 1825 / by John Power, M.D.

  • Power, John.
Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An attempt to prove, on rational principles, that the term of human pregnancy may be considerably extended beyond nine calendar months : comprising the substance of evidence given in the Gardner peerage cause, before the House of Lords, July 4, 1825 / by John Power, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    Could a child born on the 8th of December, and born alive, according to your opinion, have been begotten so late as the 11th of July in the same year ?—No, certainly not. Do you pronouce that to be impossible, according to the general laws of nature ?—/ do. Cross-examined by Mr. Attorney General, You are understood to say, that labour, at all events, must begin at the expiration of forty weeks, though the delivery may be protracted five or six days ?—Yes. Your attention has probably been directed to a case supposed to have taken place in the Reign of James the First; was Mr. Cham- berlayne, who gave evidence on that occasion, a man of eminence at that time?—I believe he was a teacher. Was he a practical man also?—I believe he was. In that case the delivery is said to have been protracted to the expiration of nearly eleven months ; do you remember the facts of the case?—No, I do not. You have never consulted it?—No, I have not. Cross-examined by Mr. Tmdal. You were understood to say, that the period of gestation, in your judgment, is forty weeks, reckoning from the time of conception ?— Yes. May there not be some distance of time intervene between the sexual intercourse and the conception ?—I should not think it likely at all; I should have no idea of that. Perhaps you have not formed a judgment decisively, either one way or the other?—Yes, I have; we imagine conception to arise from the ova seminalis, the influence of which will very soon be lost if not applied at the proper period. When you say we imagine, you mean that is your judgment?—■ Yes. Are you not indebted for those opinions, not only to your own experience, but to the works of eminent authors ?—1 speak here, and 1 thought I was called here to speak, from my own opinions, the formation of my own judgment. The question applies to the ground of your judgment?—I hear of ladies going to a much later period; but there are cases of extra- uterine conception, and the foetus never passes per vias naturales, nor in such case is the foetus ever born with life. The question is, whether the judgment of a medical man does not depend as much, or at least in some degree, on works of authority in his own profession as on his own individual experience ?—Not as to facts, certainly. I speaK from my own recollection of facts; if I were to say all I have heard upon this subject I should get into a very wide field, and perhaps be very inconsistent with reason. Are there any books in your profession which are reckoned works of authority at all ?—Yes, there are. Is it not to be concluded, that if they are works of authority, the