A manual of medical jurisprudence / by Alfred Swaine Taylor.

  • Taylor, Alfred Swaine, 1806-1880.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of medical jurisprudence / by Alfred Swaine Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    procreative power; but, according to Bonnar, the earliest period may be taken at the fourteenth day after delivery. Impregnation is not likely to take place until the organs have resumed their natural con- dition, and this will depend on the disappearance of the signs of recent delivery—such as the tender and swollen state of the vagina, the enlargement of the womb with its relaxed mouth, and the lochia! discharge. The persistence of the lochial discharge, the average duration of which after delivery Bonnar considers to be from one to three or four weeks, is of the greatest importance, as it is most likely to interfere with impregnation. The time for the restoration of the sexual organs to their natural state varies in different women, so that the date for re-impregnation must be more or less conjectural. It has been usually considered that, after the second or third month of pregnancy, the cavity of the womb is so sealed up in the develop- ment of the embryo as a result of impregnation, that it is impossible that any fruitful intercourse can take place. In two instances, how- ever, according to Bonnar, viable children were born of the same woman at five and a half and four months respectively after the first delivery. On the theory of superconception, the uterine organs must have been susceptible of a second impregnation up to the fourth month of gestation. But if the children were not born mature, the power of re-impregnation must have existed for one or two months longer than the period usually assigned—i.e. up to the fifth or sixth month of a pregnancy already existing. These researches may help to explain some legal difficulties which have occurred in reference to gestation. They furnish a curious comment upon the suggestion made by some medical jurists, that superfoetation involves the conjugal fidelity of a wife, for no suspicion of illegitimacy could be for a moment entertained simply on account of the shortness of the interval between the two deliveries of the same married woman. Supposititious Children.—Another medico-legal case, in relation to legitimacy, occurs when a woman feigns delivery, and represents the child of another person to be her offspring. She may substitute the living child of another woman for a dead child of which she herself has been delivered, or for a mole which may have passed from her. So, again, a male may be substituted for a female child, and vice versa. The practising of a fraud of this nature may seriously affect the rights of inheritance of parties; but it cannot be accomplished without great dexterity and cunning, or without the co-operation of one or more accomplices. Frauds of this kind have, in general, been committed by the aid of a low class of mid wives. One instance occurred at Chelsea, in July, 1842, where the fraud was brought to light by the death of the supposititious child. The calling in of a professional man would lead to discovery, when the question was simply whether delivery had or had not taken place; but if it be alleged that one living child has been substituted for another, the proof of this can depend on medical evidence only when the age of the supposititious child does not happen to correspond to the date of the pretended delivery. {' Ann. d'Hyg.,' 1829, t. 2, p. 227.) The legiti-