The causation of sex : a new theory of sex based on clinical materials ; together with chapters on the sex of the unborn child, and on the determination of sex at will / by E. Rumley Dawson.

  • Dawson, E. Rumley (Ernest Rumley), -1918.
Date:
1909
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The causation of sex : a new theory of sex based on clinical materials ; together with chapters on the sex of the unborn child, and on the determination of sex at will / by E. Rumley Dawson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    159/250 (page 141)
    MULTIPLE PREGNANCY 141 Triplets follow the rule of twins—that owing to the larger right ovary there are more boys than girls produced, the commonest occurrence being 2 boys and i girl, this com¬ bination being twice as numerous as any other combination ; it therefore corroborates and explains the statement of Saniter quoted by Williams} that in triplet pregnancy the children are usually derived from two ova—one from one, and two from the other, because twin boys from one ovum are far commoner than twin girls from one ovum ; and a case of triplets in a colleague's practice bore this out, the two boys being uni-ovular twins, and the girl was from a different and distinct ovum—from, I maintain, the opposite ovary. Quadruplets.—If both ovaries give rise to twins, we get quadruplets ; or if one ovary gives triplets and the other a single birth, as in a case by Simpson, 3 males and i female. Here the right ovary must have ruptured two G. Fs., one of which contained two ova, or else had a double germ in one ; while the left ovary supplied a single ovum only. If all four children are the same sex, it is possible only two G. Fs. are present, both G. Fs. containing two ova ; or one G. F. with two ova, the other G. F. having one ovum but a double germ. If there were three G. Fs. the arrangement is quite simple. It is possible for one G. F. to supply quadruplets ; the children would be all the same sex. The G. F. would then contain two ova, and each ovum a double germ. The following case is very suggestive, from the appearances of the placentae, of the origin from the two ovaries of two ova each to form the quadruplet birth : M. Etchecoin ^ reported a case of quadruplets : The mother had borne her first child nineteen months before she was delivered prematurely, at the fifth month, of 4 infants—2 males and 2 females. There were four placentae adherent in pairs. The following case proves very decisively that the one ovary produced the male child, and the other ovary the three females : ' Williams, op. cit., p. 327. British Medical Journal, October 19, 1901, p. I166.