Campbell quotes the case of
a Polish woman, aged thirty-five, the mother of nine children, most of
whom were stillborn, who conceived for the tenth time, the gestation
being normal up to the lying-in period. She had pains followed by
extraordinary effusion and some blood into the vagina. After various
protracted complaints the abdominal tumor became painful and inflamed
in the umbilical region. A breach in the walls soon formed, giving exit
to purulent matter and all the bones of a fetus. During this process
the patient received no medical treatment, and frequently no assistance
in dressing the opening. She recovered, but had an artificial anus all
her life. Sarah McKinna was married at sixteen and menstruated for the
first time a month thereafter. Ten months after marriage she showed
signs of pregnancy and was delivered at full term of a living child;
the second child was born ten months after the first, and the second
month after the second birth she again showed signs of pregnancy. At
the close of nine months these symptoms, with the exception of the
suppression of menses, subsided, and in this state she continued for
six years. During the first four years she felt discomfort in the
region of the umbilicus. About the seventh year she suffered
tumefaction of the abdomen and thought she had conceived again. The
abscess burst and an elbow of the fetus protruded from the wound. A
butcher enlarged the wound and, fixing his finger under the jaw of the
fetus, extracted the head. On looking into the abdomen he perceived a
black object, whereupon he introduced his hand and extracted piecemeal
an entire fetal skeleton and some decomposed animal-matter. The abdomen
was bound up, and in six weeks the woman was enabled to superintend her
domestic affairs; excepting a ventral hernia she had no bad
after-results. Kimura, quoted by Whitney, speaks of a case of
extrauterine pregnancy in a Japanese woman of forty-one similar to the
foregoing, in which an arm protruded through the abdominal wall above
the umbilicus and the remains of a fetus were removed through the
aperture. The accompanying illustration shows the appearance of the arm
in situ before extraction of the fetus and the location of the wound.

Bodinier and Lusk report instances of the delivery of an extrauterine
fetus by the vagina; and Mathieson relates the history of the delivery
of a living ectopic child by the vagina, with recovery of the mother.
Gordon speaks of a