He discusses the idea that woman was meant to bear
more than one child at a birth, using as his argument the
existence of the double nipple and mamma, to which might be added
the not infrequent occurrence of polymazia.
In March, 1736, in a dairy cellar in the Strand, London, a poor
woman gave birth to 3 boys and 9 girls. In the same journal was
reported the birth at Wells, Somersetshire, in 1739, of 4 boys
and a girl, all of whom were christened and were healthy. Pare in
1549 gives several instances of 5 children at a birth, and Pliny
reports that in the peninsula of Greece there was a woman who
gave birth to quintuplets on four different occasions. Petritus,
a Greek physician, speaks of the birth of quintuplets at the
seventh month. Two males and one female were born dead, being
attached to the same placenta; the others were united to a common
placenta and lived three days. Chambon mentions an instance of 5
at a birth. Not far from Berne, Switzerland, the wife of John
Gelinger, a preacher in the Lordship of Berne, brought forth
twins, and within a year after she brought forth quintuplets, 3
sons and 2 daughters. There is a similar instance reported in
1827 of a woman of twenty-seven who, having been delivered of
twins two years before, was brought to bed with 5 children, 3
boys and 2 girls.
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