[378]. Traité des Accouchemens.
[379]. Trattato dei Parti, p. 26.
[380]. L’Art des Accouchemens.
[381]. Quick, a word of Saxon origin, signifying living.
[382]. It is difficult to say why the embryon of one or two months should not have the same protection of the law, as that which has been half its time in the womb. Mahon expressed a similar opinion—“et voilà le tort immense que font quelquefois les systèmes et les opinions scholastiques!”
[383]. The only immunity to which pregnant women are entitled by the law of England is the suspension of capital punishment until after delivery. The state of utero-gestation appears in all ages to have secured certain privileges and honours to the female; the Athenians even spared the murderer who took refuge in her dwelling; the ancient kings of Persia made presents of pieces of gold to every woman in this condition; and even the Jews relaxed the rigid ordinations of the Mosaic law, and allowed prohibited viands to the pregnant female, whose delicate and fastidious appetite might make them objects of desire. In Egypt the woman condemned to die, was never executed until after her delivery, and the tribunal of the Areopagus observed a similar regulation, that the innocent infant might not suffer for the crime of its mother.
[384]. De Epidem. Lib. 3.
[385]. Tome xxvi.
[386]. La Medicine Legale relative a l’art des accouchemens, Quest. “DE LA VIABILITE,” p. 152.
[387]. “Cette distinction et cette interpretation sont evidemment conformes a l’étymologie du mot viabilité, qui dérive, non du latin vita, vie mais de via, voie, carrière, chemin; en sorte que, d’après la grammaire seule, l’enfant pourrait vivre quelques heures, meme quelques jours après sa naissance, comme il vivait dans le sein de sa mère, sans etre pour celà viable, ou capable de parcourir la carrière de la vie.”—Capuron, p. 195.