ut a male child. The
abdominal wound was five inches long, and extended from one inch above
the umbilicus straight downward. There was little or no bleeding and
the uterus was firmly contracted. She did not see a physician for three
hours. The child was found dead and, with the placenta, was lying by
her side. The neighbors were so frightened by the awful sight that they
ran away, or possibly the child might have been saved by ligature of
the funis. Not until the arrival of the clergyman was anything done,
and death ultimately ensued.

A most wonderful case of endurance of pain and heroism was one
occurring in Italy, which attracted much European comment at the time.
A young woman, illegitimately pregnant, at full term, on March 28th, at
dawn, opened her own abdomen on the left side with a common knife such
as is generally used in kitchens. The wound measured five inches, and
was directed obliquely outward and downward. She opened the uterus in
the same direction, and endeavored to extract the fetus. To expedite
the extraction, she drew out an arm and amputated it, and finding the
extraction still difficult, she cut off the head and completely emptied
the womb, including the placenta. She bound a tight bandage around her
body and hid the fetus in a straw mattress. She then dressed herself
and attended to her domestic duties. She afterward mounted a cart and
went into the city of Viterbo, where she showed her sister a cloth
bathed in blood as menstrual proof that she was not pregnant. On
returning home, having walked five hours, she was seized with an attack
of vomiting and fainted. The parents called Drs. Serpieri and Baliva,
who relate the case. Thirteen hours had elapsed from the infliction of
the wound, through which the bulk of the intestines had been protruding
for the past six hours. The abdomen was irrigated, the toilet made, and
after the eighteenth day the process of healing was well progressed,
and the woman made a recovery after her plucky efforts to hide her
shame.

Cases like the foregoing excite no more interest than those on record
in which an abdominal section has been accidental, as, for instance, by
cattle-horns, and the fetus born through the wound. Zuboldie speaks of
a case in which a fetus was born from the wound made by a bull's horn
in the mother's abdomen. Deneux describes a case in which the wound
made by the horn was not sufficiently large to permit the child's
escape, but it was subsequen