he perpetration of the species in
the case of females impregnated by delinquent rape, that distressing
manner of delivery called by the Brandenburghers _Sturzgeburt,_ the
recorded instances of multiseminal, twikindled and monstrous births
conceived during the catamenic period or of consanguineous parents--in
a word all the cases of human nativity which Aristotle has classified
in his masterpiece with chromolithographic illustrations. The gravest
problems of obstetrics and forensic medicine were examined with as much
animation as the most popular beliefs on the state of pregnancy such as
the forbidding to a gravid woman to step over a countrystile lest,
by her movement, the navelcord should strangle her creature and
the injunction upon her in the event of a yearning, ardently and
ineffectually entertained, to place her hand against that part of her
person which long usage has consecrated as the seat of castigation.
The abnormalities of harelip, breastmole, supernumerary digits, negro's
inkle, strawberry mark and portwine stain were alleged by one as a
_prima facie_ and natural hypothetical explanation of those swineheaded
(the case of Madame Grissel Steevens was not forgotten) or doghaired
infants occasionally born. The hypothesis of a plasmic memory, advanced
by the Caledonian envoy and worthy of the metaphysical traditions of
the land he stood for, envisaged in such cases an arrest of embryonic
development at some stage antecedent to the human. An outlandish
delegate sustained against both these views, with such heat as almost
carried conviction, the theory of copulation between women and the males
of brutes, his authority being his own avouchment in support of fables
such as that of the Minotaur which the genius of the elegant Latin poet
has handed down to us in the pages of his Metamorphoses. The impression
made by his words was immediate but shortlived. It was effaced as easily
as it had been evoked by an allocution from Mr Candidate Mulligan in
that vein of pleasantry which none better than he knew how to affect,
postulating as the supremest object of desire a nice clean old man.
Contemporaneously, a heated argument having arisen between Mr Delegate
Madden and Mr Candidate Lynch regarding the juridical and theological
dilemma created in the event of one Siamese twin predeceasing the other,
the difficulty by mutual consent was referred to Mr Canvasser Bloom
for instant submittal to Mr Coadjutor Deacon Dedalus. Hithert
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