the alveolar cavities filled
with epithelial cells, the lung sinking when placed in a vessel of
water. Charpentier reported a case of premature birth in his practice,
the child being not more than six and a half months and weighing 33 1/2
ounces. So sure was he that it would not live that he placed it in a
basin while he attended to the mother. After this had been done, the
child being still alive, he wrapped it in cotton and was surprised next
day to find it alive. It was then placed in a small, well-heated room
and fed with a spoon on human milk; on the twelfth day it could take
the breast, since which time it thrived and grew.

There is a case on record of a child viable at six months and twenty
days. The mother had a miscarriage at the beginning of 1877, after
which menstruation became regular, appearing last from July 3 to 9,
1877. On January 28, 1878, she gave birth to a male infant, which was
wrapped in wadding and kept at an artificial temperature. Being unable
to suckle, it was fed first on diluted cow's milk. It was so small at
birth that the father passed his ring over the foot almost to the knee.
On the thirteenth day it weighed 1250 grams, and at the end of a week
it was taking the breast. In December, 1879, it had 16 teeth, weighed
10 kilograms, walked with agility, could pronounce some words, and was
especially intelligent. Capuron relates an instance of a child born
after a pregnancy of six and a half months and in excellent health at
two years, and another living at ten years of the same age at birth.
Tait speaks of a living female child, born on the one hundred and
seventy-ninth day, with no nails on its fingers or toes, no hair, the
extremities imperfectly developed, and the skin florid and thin. It was
too feeble to grasp its mother's nipple, and was fed for three weeks by
milk from the breast through a quill. At forty days it weighed 3 pounds
and measured 13 inches. Before the expiration of three months it died
of measles. Dodd describes a case in which the catamenia were on the
24th of June, 1838, and continued a week; the woman bore twins on
January 11, 1839, one of which survived, the other dying a few minutes
after birth. She was never irregular, prompt to the hour, and this
fact, coupled with the diminutive size of the children, seemed to
verify the duration of the pregnancy. In 1825, Baber of Buxur, India,
spoke of a child born at six and a half months, who at the age of fifty
days weighed 1