[160] Joan. Riolan., Anthropographia, lib. vi. cap. vii. p. 589.
[161] Churchill, Dublin Quarterly Journ. of Med. Science, August, 1858, p. 22.
[162] A case in point has been reported by the writer; Amer. Journ. of the Med. Sciences, April, 1859.
[163] Reports to the Suffolk Dist. Med. Society of Massachusetts, 1857, and to the American Medical Association, 1859.
[164] “It would in my opinion,” says Ramsbotham, referring to the nature of fœtal existence, “be much better not to endeavor to explain the secrets of nature, so deeply hidden.”—(Obst. Medicine and Surgery, p. 309.) This belief seems still, in practice, very widely entertained.
[165] Clay, Obstetric Retrospect, March, 1848, p. 44.
[166] Medical Communications of the Mass. Med. Soc., 1858, p. 77.
The writer having been a member of this committee, here enters, as he has already done by letter to the councillors of the Society, his earnest protest against the plainly erroneous opinion avowed in that report, which was presented and accepted during his absence from the State.
By the laws of Massachusetts, the offence is considered as mainly against the person of the mother. In case of her death, already sufficiently provided for at common law, convictions can be effected, with great difficulty, under the statute,—as has twice occurred the present year, in the cases of Jackson and Brown; but hardly otherwise.
[167] In this connection honorable mention is due Drs. Tatum and Joynes, of Virginia, for their papers on “The Attributes of the Impregnated Germ,” and “Some of the Legal Relations of the Fœtus in Utero” (Virginia Medical Journal, 1856.) Through the agency of the latter of these gentlemen, an important modification has been made in the law of the State; as has also been effected in Wisconsin, by Dr. Brisbane.