3 A.M. Veslingius tells of a
woman dying of epilepsy on June 6, 1630, from whose body, two days
later, issued a child. Wolfius relates the case of a woman dying in
labor in 1677. Abdominal movements being seen six hours after death,
Cesarean section was suggested, but its performance was delayed, and
eighteen hours after a child was spontaneously born. Hoyer of Mulhausen
tells of a child with its mouth open and tongue protruding, which was
born while the mother was on the way to the grave. Bedford of Sydney,
according to Aveling, relates the story of a case in which malpractice
was suspected on a woman of thirty-seven, who died while pregnant with
her seventh child. The body was exhumed, and a transverse rupture of
the womb six inches long above the cervix was found, and the body of a
dead male child lay between the thighs. In 1862, Lanigan tells of a
woman who was laid out for funeral obsequies, and on removal of the
covers for burial a child was found in bed with her. Swayne is credited
with the description of the death of a woman whom a midwife failed to
deliver. Desiring an inquest, the coroner had the body exhumed, when,
on opening the coffin, a well-developed male infant was found parallel
to and lying on the lower limbs, the cord and placenta being entirely
unattached from the mother.

Some time after her decease Harvey found between the thighs of a dead
woman a dead infant which had been expelled postmortem. Mayer relates
the history of a case of a woman of forty-five who felt the movement of
her child for the fourth time in the middle of November. In the
following March she had hemoptysis, and serious symptoms of
inflammation in the right lung following, led to her apparent death on
the 31st of the month. For two days previous to her death she had
failed to perceive the fetal movements. She was kept on her back in a
room, covered up and undisturbed, for thirty-six hours, the members of
the family occasionally visiting her to sprinkle holy water on her
face. There was no remembrance of cadaveric distortion of the features
or any odor. When the undertakers were drawing the shroud on they
noticed a half-round, bright-red, smooth-looking body between the
genitals which they mistook for a prolapsed uterus. Early on April 2d,
a few hours before interment, the men thought to examine the swelling
they had seen the day before. A second look showed it to be a dead
female child, now lying between the thighs and connect