The principles of forensic medicine, systematically arranged and applied to British practice / John Gordon Smith.

  • John Gordon Smith
Date:
1827
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles of forensic medicine, systematically arranged and applied to British practice / John Gordon Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    been accurately observed. Chirac reported to the Academie Royalé”, that he saw a bitch, which had twice whelped, pressing the cords of her puppies with her teeth, as if masticating ; that, having had a third litter,, after losing two of her incisor teeth, she could not compress the cords 50 well, and the whole of these puppies had umbilical hernia. f Although the doctrine that a ligature is not required on the umbilical, cord cannot be admitted, we must not conclude from the mere circum- stance of no ligature being found, that the child has died precisely from that cause. In such a case, however, (which should be always investi- gated with caution) if there be no other cause of death discoverable in the body of the child, and the whole circulating system be void of blood, (the right side of the heart and the veins being usually found to con- tain it after death) we cannot but conclude that the infant has died in. this way from hemorrhage. On the other hand, if blood be found in: these vessels and cavities, some other cause of death must be gous ut for—it has not occurred through the ligature being neglected. : XXVIL Page 385. The following is Dr. Hunter’s account of this interesting case. ‘‘ She was suspected; the room was searched, and the child was found in her box, wrapped up in her wet clothes. She confessed that the child was . her’s, but denied having murdered it, or having had any intention todoso. I opened the child, with Mr. Pinkstan, of St. Alban’s Street, and the lungs would not sink in water, Her account of herself was this. She was a faithful and favourite servant in a family, which she could not leave without a certainty of her situation being discovered ; and such a discovery she imagined would be certain ruin to her for life, Under this anguish of mind she was irresolute, and wavering from day to day, as to her plan of conduct. She made some clothes for the pre- servation of her child, (a circumstance which was in her favour) and she hired a bed-rcom in an adjacent street, to be ready to receive a woman in labour at a moment's notice. Her scheme was, when taken in labour, to have run out to that house to be delivered by a midwile, who was to have been brought toher. She was to have gone home pre- sently after, and to have made the best excuse she could for being out. She had heard of soldiers’ wives being delivered behind a hedge, and following the husband with the child in,a short time after; and she hoped to be able to do as much herself. She was taken ill of a cholic, as she thought, in the night; put on some clothes both to keep her warm, and that she might be ready to run out if her labour came on. After waiting for some time, she suddenly fell into such racking pain and terror, that she found she had neither strength nor courage to go down stairs, and through the street, in that condition, and in the night, In despair she threw herself upon the bed, and by the terror and ‘anguish which she suffered, she lost her senses and fainted. When she came to a little recollection, she found herself in a deluge of discharges, and a dead child lying by her limbs. She first of all attended to the child, and found. that it was certainly dead. She lay upon the bed geome time, considering what she should do.; and, by the time there was‘a little day light, she got up, put all the wet clothes and the a .to her box, put the room and bed into order, and went into it. ‘Phe Woman of whom she hired the room, and who had received a small sum of money as een es * Plistoire de Academie Royale des Sciences, 1718.