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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    where parties have an object to carry, it is not an object, of course, with them, to deceive the person whom they consult. Have you not known, in many cases, that persons giving you this information, have themselves been deceived, and that the event has not happened as they stated it to you?—I should hardly think that the man could be deceived as to the time at which he begot a certain child. Do you think that is more in the knowledge of the man than of the woman?—I would beg to observe, that when I answered that question, it referred to cases of single connection, and not to con- nections, one of which was stated ; but that a single connection took place, the result of which connection was a pregnancy, the ultimate result of which pregnancy was a labour, where there was one single act of connection *. Then the judgment you form depends upon the truth of that information, as to there having been or not been one single act of connection?—Certainly; but the result confirmed that statement. Have you not known in many, I may say in most of the ordinary cases which occur of married persons, that females have been mis- taken in the time that they have assigned for their gestation?—A great number; but married persons do not calculate from the moment of conception, but from other circumstances. Of course the far greater number of cases that come before you are those of married persons?—Certainly : no doubt. Therefore the result of your judgment must depend mainly on that which occurs in your daily practice, and not on single and particular cases?—The result of the particular cases I have stated to your Lordships; but perhaps that result may be confirmed by an additional fact, which is this, that supposing, and you will excuse me for employing medical language perhaps, supposing a woman to menstruate upon a certain day, and her menstruation to cease on a certain day, and that woman to fall with child, that woman must produce a child at the end of forty weeks (within forty weeks is meant, we presume) from the day preceding the next expected j menstruation ; proving, therefore, with the other cases, which form ; by far the greater majority of those which have fallen under my care, proving that forty weeks is, even in those cases, the ultimum tempuspariendo mulieribus constitutum. Is not the judgment of a medical man made up, not only from his i own experience, but from books of authority on the subject?—In matters of opinion, but not in matters of fad. ^ Is not the time during which the gestation of the woman is car- ried on, partly composed of matters of judgment, being derived from facts, and partly from books?—No; I conceive it to be entirely a ■ matter of fact, provided you can give credit to the assertion of the * In some cases, is it not fair to presume that Mr. Clarke might be de- ceived, to use his own phrase, by the “ immorality of the ageV We had hoped the world was becoming more moral, and, at least, that the present age was not characterized by its immorality ; but we leave this point to be settled by the witness and the divines. Vide note, p. 6.