Buffon's Natural History, Volume 03 (of 10) / Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &c.

by comte de Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon

But, it may be urged, if it was not affected by the imagination of the mother, why did the child come into the world with broken limbs? However rash it may appear to explain a matter which is extraordinary and uncertain, and of which we have no right to exact a solution, yet this question appears to me answerable in a satisfactory manner. Circumstances of the most rare and extraordinary kind happen as necessarily as those which are frequent and common. In the infinite combinations which matter can take, the most extraordinary arrangements must sometimes happen; hence we might venture to wager, that in a million, or a thousand millions of children, there will be one born with two heads, four legs, or with broken limbs; it may, therefore, naturally happen, without the concurrence of the mother's imagination, that a child should be born with broken limbs. This may have happened more than once, and the mother, while pregnant, might have been present at the breaking on the wheel, and therefore the defect of the child's formation has been attributed to what she had seen, and to her impressed imagination. But, independant of this general answer, we may give a more direct explanation. The fœtus, as we have said, has nothing in common with the mother; its functions, organs, blood, &c. are all particular, and belong to itself; the only thing which it derives from its mother is the liquor, or nutritive lymph, which filtrates from the matrix. If this lymph is bad, or envenomed with the venereal virus, the child will be alike disordered; and it may be imagined, that all the diseases which proceed from vitiated humours may be communicated from the mother to the child. We know that the small-pox is communicative, and we have but too many examples of children who are, directly after their birth, the victims of the debauches of their parents. The venereal virus attacks the most solid parts of the bones, and it appears to act with more force towards the middle of the bone, where ossification commences; I conceive, therefore, that the child here spoken of has been attacked by the venereal disorder while in its mother's womb, and from that cause it came into the world with its bones broken through the middle.

Rickets may also produce the same effect. There is a skeleton of a rickety child in the French king's cabinet, whose arms and legs have callosities in the middle of their bones. By the inspection of this skeleton, it appeared evident that the bones had been broken during the time it was in the womb, and that afterwards the bones re-united, and formed these callosities.

But enough of a subject which credulity alone has rendered marvellous. Prejudice, especially that sort which is founded on the marvellous, will always triumph over reason, and we should have but little philosophy if we were astonished at it. We must not therefore ever expect to be able to persuade women, that the marks on their children have no connection with their unsatisfied longings. Yet might it not be asked them, before the birth of the child, of what particular longings they had been disappointed, and consequently what will be the marks their children will bear? I have often asked this question, and have only made persons angry without having ever convinced them.

The time that a woman goes with child is generally about nine months; but it is however sometimes longer and sometimes shorter. Many children are born at seven or eight months, and some not till after the ninth; but in general the deliveries which precede the term of nine months are more frequent than the others. The common time of a natural delivery extends to twenty days, that is, from eight months fourteen days to nine months and four hours.

Many children are born before the 260th day, and although these deliveries precede the general term, they are not abortions, because these children mostly live. It is commonly thought that children born at eight months cannot live, or at least that many more of them die than those born at seven months. This opinion appears to be a paradox; and by consulting experience I think we shall find it an error. The child brought forth at eight months is more formed, and consequently more vigorous, and likely to live than that which is born at the seventh. Nevertheless this opinion is pretty generally received, and founded on the authority of Aristotle.

The beginning of the seventh month is the earliest term for delivery; if the fœtus is brought forth sooner it dies, and is termed an abortion. There are, however, great limits for the time of human delivery, since they extend from the seventh to the tenth, and perhaps to the eleventh month.

Women who have had many children assert, that girls remain longer in the womb than boys. If this is really the case, we must not be surprized at female children being born at ten months. When children come before nine months they are not so well proportioned as those who are not brought into the world till ten months, the bodies of the latter are sensibly larger and better formed; their hair is longer, the growth of the teeth, although still hid under the gums, is more advanced; the voice is clearer, and the tone more deep.

There is much uncertainty on the occasional causes of delivery, and we do not perfectly know what obliges the infant to quit the womb. Some imagine, that the fœtus having acquired a certain size, the matrix is too confined for its longer stay, and that the constraint felt by the fœtus, obliges it to use every effort to quit its prison; others say, and it is nearly to the same purport, that the weight of the fœtus becomes so great, that the matrix is forced to open to free itself from the burthen. These reasons do not appear satisfactory; for the matrix must always have capacity and strength to contain and sustain the weight of a fœtus of nine months, since it often contains two, and it is certain that the weight and size of the twins of eight months are more considerable than the weight and size of a single child of nine. Besides, it often happens that a child born at nine months is smaller than the fœtus of eight months, although it continues in the womb.

Galen pretends, that the child remains in the matrix till it is able to receive its food by the mouth, and that it only forces its escape from the need of nutriment. Others have said, that the fœtus always receives its nourishment by the mouth from the liquor of the amnios; but which becomes at length so contaminated, by the transpiration and urine of the fœtus, that it becomes disgustful, and obliges the fœtus to use every exertion to quit its confinement. These reasons do not appear better than the first; for it would from thence follow, that the weakest and smallest fœtuses would remain longer in the womb than the strongest and largest, which never happens; besides, it is not food that the fœtus seeks immediately after it is born, for it can stay some time without it; on the contrary, it seems most desirous to disembarrass itself from the nutriment it took when in the womb of its mother, and to return the meconium. Other anatomists have supposed that the excrement accumulated in the bowels of the fœtus, gives it great pain, and causes it to make such efforts, that the matrix is at length obliged to give way, and to open a passage for its escape. I acknowledge I am not better satisfied with this explanation than the rest; because, why cannot the fœtus void its excrements in the amnios, if it was pressed so to do? Now this never happens; it appears, on the contrary, that this necessity of voiding the meconium is not felt till after the birth, when the motion of the diaphragm, occasioned by that of the lungs, compresses the intestines and causes this evacuation; for the meconium has never been found in the amnios of a fœtus of ten months who had not respired, whereas a fœtus of six or seven months voids this meconium a short time after respiration.