Of
the 34, only 5 lived for any length of time. He concludes that if
extracted within five or six minutes after death, they may be
born alive; if from six to ten minutes, they may still be born
alive, though asphyxiated; if from ten to twenty-six minutes,
they will be highly asphyxiated. In a great number of these cases
the infant was asphyxiated or dead in one minute. Of course, if
the death is sudden, as by apoplexy, accident, or suicide, the
child's chances are better. These statistics seem conscientious
and reliable, and we are safe in taking them as indicative of the
usual result, which discountenances the old reports of death as
taking place some time before extraction.
Peuch is credited with statistics showing that in 453 operations
101 children gave signs of life, but only 45 survived.
During the Commune of Paris, Tarnier, one night at the Maternite,
was called to an inmate who, while lying in bed near the end of
pregnancy, had been killed by a ball which fractured the base of
the skull and entered the brain. He removed the child by Cesarean
section and it lived for several days. In another case a pregnant
woman fell from a window for a distance of more than 30 feet,
instant death resulting; thirty minutes at least after the death
of the mother an infant was removed, which, after some
difficulty, was resuscitated and lived for thirteen years.
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