Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 2 of 2).djvu/8

 526 ON PARTURITION.

for in his case, although nature has laid down for the most part certain boundaries, yet there is sometimes a vast differ- ence in individuals, and instances are recorded of women bring- ing forth viable children, some in the seventh, and others in the fourteenth month. Further, although Aristotle 1 asserts " that the majority of eight months' children in Greece die," he still admits " that they survive in Egypt and in some other countries, where the women have easy labours ; " and although he says "that children born before the seventh month can under no circumstances survive, and that the seventh month is the first in which anything like maturity exists, and that the feebleness of children born even then is such as to make it necessary to wrap them in wool/' he still allows " that these are viable." Franciscus Valesius tells us of a girl in his time, who, although a five months' child, had arrived at the age of twelve years. Adrianus Spigelius 2 also records the case of a certain courier, " who proved to the satisfaction of all, on the public testimony of the city of Middleburgh, that he was born at the commencement of the sixth month, and that his frame was so slight and fragile that his mother found it necessary to wrap him up in cotton until such times as he was able to bear the ordinary dress of infants." Avicenna 3 also states that a sixth months' child is very capable of surviving. In like manner it is proved, both by ancient and modern authorities, that chil- dren may live who are born after the completion of the eleventh month. "We are told," says Pliny, 4 /' by Massurius, that when his inheritance was claimed by the next heir, Lucius Papyrius the prsetor gave the decision against the claimant, although, by his mother's account, Massurius was a thirteen months' child the ground of the judgment being that the term of utero-ges- tation had not been as yet accurately determined. There was indeed, not so long since, a woman in our own country who carried her child more than sixteen months, during ten of which she distinctly felt the movements of the foetus, as indeed did others, and at last brought forth a living infant. These are rare contingencies, I will allow ; and therefore it is hardly fair of Spigelius to blame Ulpianus the lawyer because he re- garded as legitimate no child born after the completion of the

1 Hist. Anim. lib. vii. cap. 4. 3 Lib. ix, De Nat. Anim. c. ult.

2 In Epist. de incerto tempore partus. * Loco procitato.

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