In an important case, however, which came before the Court of Chancery in England, the court held that there was no definite evidence of the possibility of pregnancy in a woman sixty years of age; but that the greatest age at which, in England, pregnancy had indisputably occurred, was 54.
Among 4,925 deliveries occurring in the Prague Maternity Hospital, Schwing reports that there were 9 women delivered for the first time when over 40 years of age. Of these:
3 were 41 years of age.
2 were 42 years of age.
1 was 43 years of age.
2 were 44 years of age.
1 was 47 years of age.
Haller reports the cases of two women who gave birth to children, one at the age of 63, the other at the age of 70 years. Meissner delivered a woman of 60 years of her seventh child; Rush attended the delivery of a woman aged 60; Dewees that of a woman aged 61. Mende and Bernstein report cases of delivery at the age of 60. Marion Sims saw, in the state of Alabama, a negro woman 58 to 60 years of age, who gave birth to a child at this age, at an interval of twenty years since her last pregnancy. Nieden reports a case in which the first pregnancy occurred 26 years after marriage. When married, the wife was 18 years of age, the husband 30; during their first twenty-five years of married life there was no sign of pregnancy, but when the wife was 44 years of age, menstruation, hitherto regular, suddenly ceased; the cause of the cessation proved to be pregnancy, and at term a healthy girl weighing nine pounds was born; the mother was able to nurse the child herself. Smith attended a woman aged 52 who was delivered of twins; the youngest of her eight other children, who were then all living, was ten years of age.
Rodzewitsch collected from the Russian literature of the years 1872 to 1881, eleven cases in which women aged 50 to 55 had given birth to children. Talquist reports that in Finland, in the year 1883, a woman 58 years of age was delivered; whilst Ansell records the case of an Englishwoman who became a mother when 59 years of age. John Kennedy records the case of a woman of 62 who was normally delivered at this age; she had begun to menstruate at the age of 13, and since the age of 20 had previously given birth to 21 children, the last five when she was 47, 49, 51, 53, and 56 years of age, respectively. Prior even reports the case of a woman 72 years of age, who not only menstruated, but had an abortion(!)
The ideal of fertility in women is that the first completed act of sexual intercourse should be followed immediately by conception, that the pregnancy should terminate after the normal lapse of time in the birth of a child, and that the same process should be repeated at intervals of about ten months until the end of active sexual life. In actual experience, however, this never occurs. Fertilization as an immediate consequence of the first act of sexual intercourse (which in the lower animals is regarded as the rule) is a very rare occurrence in human beings. Moreover, in no single marriage is the reproductive capacity of the wife utilized to the full, up to the time of extinction of her generative faculty; either because the potency of the male partner undergoes a gradual decline, or, it may be, because, after a while, sexual intercourse becomes less frequent, or because precautions against procreation are taken.