The medical evidence relative to the duration of human pregnancy, as given in the Gardner peerage cause, before the Committee for Privileges of the House of lords in 1825-26 / With introductory remarks and notes by Robert Lyall.

Robert Lyall

Date:: 1826

Credit: The medical evidence relative to the duration of human pregnancy, as given in the Gardner peerage cause, before the Committee for Privileges of the House of lords in 1825-26 / With introductory remarks and notes by Robert Lyall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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$t'easioti, l lial he was deceived about his own wife, whom he treated a» dropsical, tliouj>h she had passed the fourth montli. In tlie case of Patience Ellis, after the woman, eight months gone with child, was dead, a medical practitioner (who is said to \\a.\eexa7nined the body) gave it as his opinion she had probably died of dropsy! It was a case of murder by strangliug. Pregnancy and ascites may exist together ; and in this state women have borne several children. The ovaria are subject to enlargement, and, among other causes, from dropsy. Pregnant women have been killed by the mistaken application of the trocar. Along with dropsy of the ovarium, the functions of menstruating, and even child-bearing, may go on. A famous case of mistaken charge of pregnancy and child-murder is on record, where ovarian dropsy existed to an extreme degree *. Sometimes the abdomen enlarges without any known cause, and where there is no question as to pregnancy. Women in easy cir- cumstances are often disposed to obesity; and those who have had large families are liable to enlargements of the abdomen, and conse- quent mistakes. Tumours also form in the uterus itself; and these may arise, either from morbid action or from retention of the men- strual flux. Besides these causes of deception, it should be remarked, that some women at the full time are so small, that we could scarcely suspect pregnancy, while others have been so large as nearly to justify the belief of a number of children being contained in the uterus; yet a single child has been the product. The size of preg- nant women, of course, must also greatly depend upon the scarcity or the abundance of the liquor amnii. For the various reasons assigned, then, no man would ever trust to the size of the abdomen in determining the period of pregnancy, except in conjunction with the other symptoms; at most, it can only be reckoned an auxiliary, and in dubious cases it will be of little or no adA^antage. The subsidence of the swelling, however, at the end of the ninth month, is an indication of the ordinary term of pregnancy being completed, and of the approach of labour. Examination per Vaginam. Some practitioners seem to have placed great reliance upon an examination per vaginam, as a means of ascertaining the exact period of gestation; and this mode is in much greater repute and practice upon the Continent than it is — or than it is to be hoped it ever will be — in this country. An examination in the earliest months of pregnancy can give but little conclusive information ; and after quickening, or after the fourth month, it may inform us that a female is some months pregnant: in the after months of gestation it may assist our judgment con- siderably, but in no case can it alone indicate the precise period of pi'egnancy. Even the most expert French accoucheurs, who are ♦That of the Demoiselle Famin, published in a separate form at Berlin and Paris, by Valantin, Maitre en Chirurgie de Paris, 1768.—Vide Smith'.<t Principles of Forensic Medicine, ]>. 486.$