EXTENT OF THE FRUITFUL PERIOD.
The cessation of the menses, as I have remarked, is generally the limit of the period of child-bearing; but this rule, like all others, has its exceptions.
Bartholomew Mosse, according to Dr. Guy, mentions four cases of women pregnant in their fifty-first year, and Dr. Labatt, of Dublin, one; Knebel and Lamatte each one in the fifty-second year; Bartholomew Mosse and Knebel each one in the fifty-fourth year; a case of pregnancy at the same age (that of Mrs. Ashley) is also related in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1816, in the French accusation, in which the succession to an estate was disputed on the ground of the mother being fifty-eight years old when the child was born, and the decision was given in favor of the fact.
Pliny, Valescus de Tarenta, and Marra, of Venice, record cases of pregnancy at sixty.
Capuron, a French author, states that a woman of sixty-three was generally believed in Paris to have given birth to a daughter.
Dr. Beck, of Albany, quotes a case from the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, of a woman at White Hall, New York, becoming a mother at sixty-four.
A writer in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, Mr. Robertson, states that out of 10,000 pregnant females registered at the Manchester Lying-in Hospital, 436 were upward of forty-six years of age. Of these there were—
| 397 | from | 40 to 46 | |
| 13 | in their | 47th | year |
| 8 | „ | 48th | „ |
| 6 | „ | 49th | „ |
| 9 | „ | 50th | „ |
| 1 | „ | 52d | „ |
| 1 | „ | 53d | „ |
| 1 | „ | 54th | „ |
In some rare instances, also, conception has been known to take place prior to menstruation. Cases of premature fruitfulness are related by high authorities. Montgomery delivered a female of twins before the completion of her fifteenth year; La Motte and Sir E. Horne give instances of pregnancy in the thirteenth year; the last-named author another in the twelfth; and Bruce, in Abyssinia, and Demboss, in Bengal, met with mothers of eleven years. These facts I take from Dr. Guy.
I am next to speak of the cessation of the menstrual function, the turn, or change of life, as it is called. And I will here observe, that this period is as natural to the system of the female as puberty, or any other. But notwithstanding it is so, it is important to be remembered that all great changes or evolutions of the body render it probably, on the whole, more liable to take on diseased action than it is at ordinary times.