Mayer relates the history of a case of a woman of forty-five who
felt the movement of her child for the fourth time in the middle
of November. In the following March she had hemoptysis, and
serious symptoms of inflammation in the right lung following, led
to her apparent death on the 31st of the month. For two days
previous to her death she had failed to perceive the fetal
movements. She was kept on her back in a room, covered up and
undisturbed, for thirty-six hours, the members of the family
occasionally visiting her to sprinkle holy water on her face.
There was no remembrance of cadaveric distortion of the features
or any odor. When the undertakers were drawing the shroud on they
noticed a half-round, bright-red, smooth-looking body between the
genitals which they mistook for a prolapsed uterus. Early on
April 2d, a few hours before interment, the men thought to
examine the swelling they had seen the day before. A second look
showed it to be a dead female child, now lying between the thighs
and connected with the mother by the umbilical cord. The
interment was stopped, and Mayer was called to examine the body,
but with negative results, though the signs of death were not
plainly visible for a woman dead fifty-eight hours.
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