us mentions a healthy child born
one-half hour after the mother's death. In the Gentleman's Magazine
there is a record of an instance, in 1759, in which a midwife, after
the death of a woman whom she had failed to deliver, imagined that she
saw a movement under the shroud and found a child between its mother's
legs. It died soon after. Valerius Maximus says that while the body of
the mother of Gorgia Epirotas was being carried to the grave, a loud
noise was heard to come from the coffin and on examination a live child
was found between the thighs,--whence arose the proverb: "Gorgiam prius
ad funus elatum, quam natum fuisse."

Other cases of postmortem delivery are less successful, the delivery
being delayed too late for the child to be viable. The first of
Aveling's cases was that of a pregnant woman who was hanged by a
Spanish Inquisitor in 1551 While still hanging, four hours later, two
children were said to have dropped from her womb. The second case was
of a woman of Madrid, who after death was shut in a sepulcher. Some
months after, when the tomb was opened, a dead infant was found by the
side of the corpse. Rolfinkius tells of a woman who died during
parturition, and her body being placed in a cellar, five days later a
dead boy and girl were found on the bier. Bartholinus is accredited
with the following: Three midwives failing to deliver a woman, she
died, and forty-eight hours after death her abdomen swelled to such an
extent as to burst her grave-clothes, and a male child, dead, was seen
issuing from the vagina. Bonet tells of a woman, who died in Brussels
in 1633, who, undelivered, expired in convulsions on Thursday. On
Friday abdominal movements in the corpse were seen, and on Sunday a
dead child was found hanging between the thighs. According to Aveling,
Herman of Berne reports the instance of a young lady whose body was far
advanced in putrefaction, from which was expelled an unbroken ovum
containing twins. Even the placenta showed signs of decomposition.
Naumann relates the birth of a child on the second day after the death
of the mother. Richter of Weissenfels, in 1861, reported the case of a
woman who died in convulsions, and sixty hours after death an eight
months' fetus came away. Stapedius writes to a friend of a fetus being
found dead between the thighs of a woman who expired suddenly of an
acute disease. Schenk mentions that of a woman, dying at 5 P.M., a
child having two front teeth was born at