me of the report. In the village of Iwokina, on May 26, 1854, the
wife of a peasant bore 4 children at a birth, all surviving. Bousquet
speaks of a primiparous mother, aged twenty-four, giving birth to 4
living infants, 3 by the breech and 1 by the vertex, apparently all in
one bag of membranes. They were nourished by the help of 3 wet-nurses.
Bedford speaks of 4 children at a birth, averaging 5 pounds each, and
all nursing the mother.

Quintuplets are quite rare, and the Index Catalogue of the Surgeon
General's Library, U. S. A., gives only 19 cases, reports of a few of
which will be given here, together with others not given in the
Catalogue, and from less scientific though reliable sources. In the
year 1731 there was one case of quintuplets in Upper Saxony and another
near Prague, Bohemia. In both of these cases the children were all
christened and had all lived to maturity. Garthshore speaks of a
healthy woman, Margaret Waddington, giving birth to 5 girls, 2 of which
lived; the 2 that lived weighed at birth 8 pounds 12 ounces and 9
pounds, respectively. He discusses the idea that woman was meant to
bear more than one child at a birth, using as his argument the
existence of the double nipple and mamma, to which might be added the
not infrequent occurrence of polymazia.

In March, 1736, in a dairy cellar in the Strand, London, a poor woman
gave birth to 3 boys and 9 girls. In the same journal was reported the
birth at Wells, Somersetshire, in 1739, of 4 boys and a girl, all of
whom were christened and were healthy. Pare in 1549 gives several
instances of 5 children at a birth, and Pliny reports that in the
peninsula of Greece there was a woman who gave birth to quintuplets on
four different occasions. Petritus, a Greek physician, speaks of the
birth of quintuplets at the seventh month. Two males and one female
were born dead, being attached to the same placenta; the others were
united to a common placenta and lived three days. Chambon mentions an
instance of 5 at a birth. Not far from Berne, Switzerland, the wife of
John Gelinger, a preacher in the Lordship of Berne, brought forth
twins, and within a year after she brought forth quintuplets, 3 sons
and 2 daughters. There is a similar instance reported in 1827 of a
woman of twenty-seven who, having been delivered of twins two years
before, was brought to bed with 5 children, 3 boys and 2 girls. Their
length was from 15 1/2 to 16 1/2 inches. Although regularly formed,