A centennial address delivered in the Sanders Theatre, at Cambridge, June 7, 1881 : before the Massachusetts Medical Society.

  • Samuel Abbott Green
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A centennial address delivered in the Sanders Theatre, at Cambridge, June 7, 1881 : before the Massachusetts Medical Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Lamar Soutter Library, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

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    This furnished all the testimony needed at that time to show that the whole affair was snpernatui-al. It is not a little singular that Mrs. Hutchinson her- self, a short time afterward, was also the subject of a medical and clerical inquiry. Her theological heresy had taken a uterine form of expression, according to the belief of those days, though now it would be con- sidered a case of hydatids. She was then living in Rhode Island, and — I again quote from Winthrop's History, — After her time was fulfilled, tliat she expected deliverance of a child, was delivered of a monstrous birth, which, being diversely related in the country, (and, in the open asseinbly at Boston, upon a lecture day, declared by Mr. Cotton to be twenty-seven several lumps of man's seed, without any alteration, or mixture of any- thing from the woman, and thereupon gatliered, 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.) here- upon the governour wrote to Mr. Clarke, a physician and a preacher to those of the island, to know the certainty, who returned him this answer: Mrs. Hutchinson, six weeks before her delivery, per- ceived 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 imraoderato tluore uteiino) it was brought to light, and I was called to see it, where I beheld, first unwashed, (and afterwards ni 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 membrane in which it was involved,) to be partly wind and partly water. Of these several lumps there were about twenty-six, according to the relation of those, who more narrowly searched into the number of them. I took notice of six or seven of some bigness; 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
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