pound and 13 ounces and was 14 inches long. The longest
circumference of the head was 10 inches and the shortest 9.1 inches.
The child suckled freely and readily. In Spaeth's clinic there was a
viable infant at six and a half months weighing 900 grams. Spaeth says
that he has known a child of six months to surpass in eventual
development its brothers born at full term.

In some cases there seems to be a peculiarity in women which manifests
itself by regular premature births. La Motte, van Swieten, and Fordere
mention females who always brought forth their conceptions at the
seventh month.

The incubator seems destined to be the future means of preserving these
premature births. Several successful cases have been noticed, and by
means of an incubator Tarnier succeeded in raising infants which at the
age of six months were above the average. A full description of the
incubator may be found. The modified Auvard incubator is easily made;
the accompanying illustrations (Figs. 5, 6, and 7) explain its
mechanism. Several improved incubators have been described in recent
years, but the Auvard appears to be the most satisfactory.

The question of retardation of labor, like that of premature birth, is
open to much discussion, and authorities differ as to the limit of
protraction with viability. Aulus Gellius says that, after a long
conversation with the physicians and wise men, the Emperor Adrian
decided in a case before him, that of a woman of chaste manners and
irreproachable character, the child born eleven months after her
husband's death was legitimate. Under the Roman law the Decenviri
established that a woman may bear a viable child at the tenth month of
pregnancy. Paulus Zacchias, physician to Pope Innocent X, declared that
birth may be retarded to the tenth month, and sometimes to a longer
period. A case was decided in the Supreme Court of Friesland, a
province in the northern part of the Netherlands, October, 1634, in
which a child born three hundred and thirty-three days after the death
of the husband was pronounced legitimate. The Parliament of Paris was
gallant enough to come to the rescue of a widow and save her reputation
by declaring that a child born after a fourteen months' gestation was
legitimate. Bartholinus speaks of an unmarried woman of Leipzig who was
delivered after a pregnancy of sixteen months. The civil code of France
provides that three hundred days shall constitute the longest period of
the legit