Life, birth, and live-birth : a medico-legal study / by Stanley B. Atkinson.

  • Atkinson, Stanley Bean.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Life, birth, and live-birth : a medico-legal study / by Stanley B. Atkinson. 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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    It is proposed to consider the definitions of the terras Child, Birth, and Live-birth, the facts necessary to prove the proposition that a child was born alive, and the occasions when such proof may be demanded. The term ‘ Still-birth ’ will be discussed and some ‘ cases affecting the venter ’ will be enumerated. I. In the Crimmal Laiv a child is a human foetus which is lorn^ alive or dead, at such a stage of uterine development as experience shows is necessary for capacity to survive birth, viz. at least five calendar months. For proprietary rights, the venter, at every stage of gestation, is by con^ striiction considered as a potential child. The following statements hold in criminal and in civil cases. II. A child is born at the moment that its body has completely quitted the mother. III. A child is live-born in the legal sense, when, after entire birth, it exhibits a clear sign of mdependent vitality; in practice, at least the evanescently persistent activity of the heart. Vitae habilitas (viabilitd) need not be proved in English law. IV. Positive proof of the alleged live-birth of a given noic lifeless child is necessary in latv. Where respiration was never fully established^ m the large majority of cases, it is essential for one present at the parturition to give direct evidence, as well of the complete birth as the subsequent exhibition of a sign of life. / I. A Child. Normally the fruit of the human womb is ripe after forty weeks’ gestation. The aid of pharmacy has been invoked, both to hasten and to delay an event of which Blackstone (1765) says: ‘being a matter of some uncertainty the law is not exact as to a few days.^ Many instances are recorded, on suflGicient medical authority, where so long a term was not necessary to produce a living and a rearable child: George III, though prematurely born, ‘ was a king! ’ The value of medical evidence in such cases is seen in Bailey s Divorce Bill {The Globe, March ii, 1817) and the Poulett Peerage decision [1903] A. C. 395, H. L. (E.). Occasionally, too, a retarded delivery, p>artus serotinus, is affirmed: in the case of Robert RadwelVs widow (1290) we read that a son was born per uyidecim dies post nltimum tempus legitimum mulieribus constitutum, he was ruled not legitimate (i Bob Abr. 356). In 1620 the Court, having examined physicians, allowed the jury to accept it as a fact, that a legitimate posthumous child might be born after forty weeks and nine days; this is the first published case which records expert medical evidence {Alsop v. Boivtrell, Cro. Jac. 541). Forty-three weeks were allowed in 1791 {Foster v. Cook, 3 Bro. C. C. 347 ; Brock v. Kellock, 4 L. T. B. 57^)* Hippocrates would not allow more than ten solar months, Coke only