As
Littre puts it, "Les ecrits hippocratiques demeurent isoles au
milieu des debris de l'antique litterature
medicale."--(Ballantyne.)
The first to be considered is the transmission of contagious
disease to the fetus in utero. The first disease to attract
attention was small-pox. Devilliers, Blot, and Depaul all speak
of congenital small-pox, the child born dead and showing
evidences of the typical small-pox pustulation, with a history of
the mother having been infected during pregnancy. Watson reports
two cases in which a child in utero had small-pox. In the first
case the mother was infected in pregnancy; the other was nursing
a patient when seven months pregnant; she did not take the
disease, although she had been infected many months before.
Mauriceau delivered a woman of a healthy child at full term after
she had recovered from a severe attack of this disease during the
fifth month of gestation. Mauriceau supposed the child to be
immune after the delivery. Vidal reported to the French Academy
of Medicine, May, 1871, the case of a woman who gave birth to a
living child of about six and one-half months' maturation, which
died some hours after birth covered with the pustules of seven or
eight days' eruption.
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