The medical evidence relative to the duration of human pregnancy, given in the Gardner peerage cause, before the Committee for Privileges of the House of Lords in 1825-6 : with introductory remarks and notes / by Robert Lyall.

Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords. Committee for Privileges

Date:: 1826

Credit: The medical evidence relative to the duration of human pregnancy, given in the Gardner peerage cause, before the Committee for Privileges of the House of Lords in 1825-6 : with introductory remarks and notes / by Robert Lyall. 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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${Mr. Attorney General.) Had you attended her before?—Never. That was from her own information. “ She had in her own opinion gone two months.” {Mr. Tindal.) Was this a description of any symptoms, or the account she gave you when she called you in ?—She gave me an account that she had gone beyond her calculation two months, and that for the last month she had experienced a great deal of spurious pain. {Mr. Attorney General.) Did she say that she experienced a great deal of spurious pain?—Yes. Did she use those words ?—No ; that she had experienced a great deal of pain, that I considered to be spurious. I have given the words that I wrote down. You have read the words that you wrote down ?—Yes. Those are the words you had written down ?—Yes. Then the note is not correct ?—Of course, in making out a case with [without] any view to evidence, I give it in the medical language. “ The membranes ruptured at three in the morning, at which time labour commenced.” {Mr. Adam.) Was that a fact within your own knowledge ?— I think not. “ At nine o’clock she was having regular and strong paroxysms” — I conclude I got to her at that time — “ coming on every five minutes. On examination, the head presented fully upon the anterior parts of the womb.” That was a fact within my know- ledge. “ The os uteri,” the mouth of the womb, “ being so far back towards the sacrum, that I could not find it without the greatest difficulty. I at length however hooked my finger into it, it being just large enough to admit it freely ; attempting to bring it more centrical, and at the same time to stimulate it and dilate it; a satisfactory progress was made, and soon after one the child was born.” I adduce this case to prove, that obliquity of the os uteri may postpone labour for two months, even ; that was the inference in my own mind. {Mr. Attorney General.) Was that postponed labour or deli- very ?—The labour was postponed, in my opinion *. {Mr. Tmdal.) You were about to state some other case, that led you to the same result?—^'fhe belly of a woman being relaxed, so as to ])roduce what we term a pendulous belly, I believe upon this principle will protract labour, protract the commencement of it, in consequence of the child being allowed to gravitate over the front of the pubis in the pendulous belly. May I be allowed to read a case from a treatise I published, not of my own, but my father’s? The witness was informed he could not read that case. I will give you one of my own. {Mr. Attorney General.) The case you have [before] referred to was not one of your own ?—It was from my own practice. • Granting the fact, then, that the patient had exceeded her regular time by two months—and we are veiy sceptical on this head—this was a case of postponed labour, and of course of protracted ge.itation.—Vide Introduc-$