History of medicine in Massachusetts : a centennial address delivered before the Massachusetts Medical Society at Cambridge, June 7, 1881.

  • Samuel Abbott Green
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History of medicine in Massachusetts : a centennial address delivered before the Massachusetts Medical Society at Cambridge, June 7, 1881. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    37/144 page 29
    heresy had taken a uterine form of expression, ac- cording to the belief of those days, thougli now it would bo considered a case of hydatids. She was then living in Rhode Island, and—I again quote from Winthroi)'s History— After her time was fulfilled, that she expected deliverance of a child, was delivered of a monstrous birth, which, being diverse- ly related in the country (and, in the open assembly at Boston, upon a lecture day, declared by Mr. Cotton to be twenty-seven several luinjis of man's seed, without any alteration, or mixture of anything from the woman, and thereupon gathered, that it might signify her error in denying inherent righteousness, but that all was Christ in us, and nothing of ours in our faith, love, etc.) hereupon the governour wrote to Mr. Clarke, a physician and a preacher to those of the island, to know the certainty there- of, who returned him this answer: Mrs. Hutchinson, six weeks before her delivery, perceived her body to be greatly distempered, and her spirits failing, and in that regard doubtful of life, she sent to me, etc., and not long after (in immoderato fluore uterino) it was brought to light, and I was called to see it, where I beheld, first unwashed (and afterwards in warm water,) several lumps, every one of them greatly confused, and if you consider each of them according to the representation of the whole, they were altogether without form. . . . . The small globes I likewise opened, and perceived the matter of them (setting aside the mem- brane in which it was involved,) to be partly wind and partly water. Of these several lumps there were about twenty-six, ac- cording to the relation of those, who more narrowly searched into the number of them. I took notice of six or seven of some big- ness ; the rest were small; but all as I have declared, except one or two, which differed much from the rest both in matter and form; and the whole was like the [blank] of the liver, being simular and every where like itself. When I had opened it, the matter seemed to be blood congealed. The governour, not satis- fied with this relation, spake after with the said Mr. Clarke, who thus cleared all the doubts: The lumps were twenty-six or twen- ty-seven, distinct and not joined together; there came no secun- dine after them; six of them were as great as liis fist, and one as great as two fists; the rest each less than other, and the small- est about the bigness of the top of his thumb. The globes were round things, included in the lumps, about the bigness of a small Indian bean, and like the pearl in a man's eye.—(i. 326-328.) These extracts will serve to show some of the 5
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3