other did not marry, and although
not a dwarf, was under-sized; she had her catamenia every third week.
Post describes a 2-pound child.

On the other hand, there have been infants characterized by their
enormous size at birth. Among the older writers, Cranz describes an
infant which at birth weighed 23 pounds; Fern mentions a fetus of 18
pounds; and Mittehauser speaks of a new-born child weighing 24 pounds.
Von Siebold in his "Lucina" has recorded a fetus which weighed 22 1/2
pounds. It is worthy of comment that so great is the rarity of these
instances that in 3600 cases, in the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin, only one
child reached 11 pounds.

There was a child born in Sussex in 1869 which weighed 13 1/2 pounds
and measured 26 1/2 inches. Warren delivered a woman in Derbyshire of
male twins, one weighing 17 pounds 8 ounces and the other 18 pounds.
The placenta weighed 4 pounds, and there was an ordinary pailful of
liquor amnii. Both the twins were muscular and well formed; the parents
were of ordinary stature, and at last reports the mother was rapidly
convalescing. Burgess mentions an 18-pound new-born child; end Meadows
has seen a similar instance. Eddowes speaks of the birth of a child at
Crewe, a male, which weighed 20 pounds 2 ounces and was 23 inches long.
It was 14 1/2 inches about the chest, symmetrically developed, and
likely to live. The mother, who was a schoolmistress of thirty-three,
had borne two previous children, both of large size. In this instance
the gestation had not been prolonged, the delivery was spontaneous, and
there was no laceration of the parts.

Chubb says that on Christmas Day, 1852, there was a child delivered
weighing 21 pounds. The labor was not severe and the other children of
the family were exceptionally large. Dickinson describes a woman, a
tertipara, who had a most difficult labor and bore an extremely large
child. She had been thirty-six hours in parturition, and by
evisceration and craniotomy was delivered of a child weighing 16
pounds. Her first child weighed 9 pounds, her second 20, and her third,
the one described, cost her her life soon after delivery.

There is a history of a Swedish woman in Boston who was delivered by
the forceps of her first child, which weighed 19 3/4 pounds and which
was 25 3/4 inches long. The circumference of the head was 16 3/4
inches, of the neck 9 3/4, and of the thigh 10 3/4 inches.

Rice speaks of a child weighing 20 1/4 pounds at birth. Johnston