The medical evidence relative to the duration of human pregnancy, given in the Gardner peerage cause, before the Committee for Privileges of the House of Lords in 1825-6 : with introductory remarks and notes / by Robert Lyall.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords. Committee for Privileges.
Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical evidence relative to the duration of human pregnancy, given in the Gardner peerage cause, before the Committee for Privileges of the House of Lords in 1825-6 : with introductory remarks and notes / by Robert Lyall. 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.

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    from tlie regular laws of utero-gestation do occur, they include cases of jirotracted j)regnancy and cases of abbreviated pregnancy. is concise and decisive. ‘ To fix bastardy on a child, the husband’s absence must continue till within six lunar months of the birth. And a child born after the tenth lunar month, is accounted a bastard.’ ’The English law, on which our own (the American) is founded, does not prescribe a precise time. 'Diere are, however, some decisions which will show the ordinary course of adjudication.” The reader will find the above quotations, and the details of some of the cases to which allusion has just been made, in Beck’s Elements of Medical Jurisprudence, p. 202—205. “ Pl'my tells us, that the Pnctor, L. Papirius, was declared entitled to suc- ceed an infant bom after thirteen months; but he adds, this was became no time appeared by law “ quoniam nullum cerium tempus pariendi statum videre- lur.” Vt'e read in Aulus Gellius of an edict by the Emperor Adrian in favour of a woman, of irreproachable character, who was delivered eleven months after the decease of her husband: and the Parliament of Paris, in the case of a widow, decided in favour of the legitimacy of an infant born in the fourteenth month of pregnancy. Bartholin relates the case of a young woman at Leipsic who was delivered in the sLvteenth month ; and, if we may credit it, the ac- count would appear to have been as unexceptionable as any case on record, for during her pregnancy she was in custody by order of the magistrates. ’The civil code of France has placed a limit to our credulity respecting re- tarded births, and decrees three hundred days, or ten months, to be the most distant period at which the legitimacy of a birth shall be allowed*.” “ The Roman law was liberal in respect of the legitimacy of retarded ges- tations. The Decemvirs allowed children born in the tenth month to be legi- timate ; and the Emperor Adrian admitted the legitimacy of one bom eleven months after the death of the husband, as the mother had a good and moral reputation. The Parliament of Paris, in 1647, decided the legitimacy of a child born eleven months after the departure of the father to another country. ’The University of Heidelberg allowed tbe legitimacy of a child born at the expiration of thirteen months. See Nebel’s “ Dissertation sur les Enfans n6es k treize mois,” published in the first part of the eighteenth century. The celebrated Mauriceau, whose work on Midwifery appeared about the year 1688, and La Motte, whose book came out in the beginning of the eigh- teenth century, have recorded cases in their own practice in which pregnancy continued twelve or thirteen months. 'The former states, that there is no fixed limit, either for conception or uterine gestation; that they are influenced by many circumstances over which we have no control. Perhaps the most celebrated question of this nature that was ever dis- cussed in the medical world, was that which, in the close of the eighteenth century, called forth the splendid talents and ingenious theories of Petit, Louis, and Astmc. It was to ascertain whether the birth of a child, occur- ring ten months and seventeen days after the death of the husband, was legi- timate, and consequently entitled to succeed to the father’s property, who at his death was eighty years of age, and subject to much bodily infirmity. It is true, they did not believe or assert the legitimacy of this child, from the moral and physical considerations which the infirmities and age of the father and the immoral character of the mother suggest, but, from the principles of anatomy, physiology, and experience, they showed the possibility of such extraordinary pregnancies. At Lyons, in 1782, Benoite Franquet was unexpectedly delivered of a child of seven months. Three weeks after, she experienced the sensations * By the law of Scotland, a child horn six months after the marriage of the mother, or ten months after the death of the father, is considered legiti- mate.—i'ide Paris and Fonblanque's Medical Jurisprudence, vol. i, p. 247.