2. The breasts are swelled, are harder than usual, and painful; and, in some cases, lumpy to the touch, and emit, by pressure or suction, a lactiform fluid; the nipples are thicker, and the areola, by which they are surrounded, is widened in extent, and darkened in colour.
3. The abdomen is flaccid, and its skin lies in folds, and is traversed in various directions with shining, reddish, and whitish lines, and light-coloured broken streaks, which especially extend from the groins and the pubes towards the navel.
4. There is an extraordinary swelling and tumefaction of the external parts of generation; sometimes the anterior margin of the perineum is lacerated, or it is very lax, from the distention which it has undergone.
5. The vagina is preternaturally distended; the orifice of the uterus is soft and open, and capable of admitting the point of the finger without difficulty, as if a late discharge had been made from it; the womb itself, not having properly collapsed, and resumed its natural shape and dimensions, may be felt through the parietes of the abdomen, voluminous, firm, and globular, contracting and expanding under the hand, on pressure.
6. A discharge of serous fluid mingled with blood from the vagina, called the Lochia, continues from five to thirty-five days after delivery: it differs from the common menstrual flux in being paler, but more particularly in its peculiar and characteristic sour odour; at first this discharge is decidedly sanious, but in a few days it becomes of a much paler and of a brownish, or a dirty green hue, so as to acquire the common term of green waters.
In addition to these signs, Michael Albertus mentions the hair falling off from the pubes as a sign of delivery; it is hardly necessary to caution the practitioner against relying upon any sign so extremely uncertain and precarious.
Although the period during which the consecutive signs of delivery remain evident, will vary in each case, yet as a general position we must admit with Zacchias,[[394]] Albert, Bohn, Foderé, Mahon, and Belloc, that after ten or twelve days, they may become too obscure to afford unexceptionable evidence. This conclusion was sanctioned by the arrêt of the parliament of Paris, in the case of a woman of Mantes accused of infanticide, who, in consequence of a conference with Antoine Petit and Louis[[395]] was pronounced innocent, upon the ground of the woman not having been examined as to the fact of her delivery, until after the expiration of a month. The criminal department of the Seine acquitted a woman cook of the name of Aimée Perdriat, charged with the perpetration of a similar crime, and of whose guilt no reasonable doubt could be entertained, in consequence of the same defect in the medical testimony.[[396]]
The relative value which each of the signs possesses, will be better appreciated after we have considered the diseases whose effects may resemble them; but as a general principle we are anxious to enforce the necessity of always considering the consecutive signs of parturition collectively, and not individually; under such circumstances the practitioner can never be betrayed into an erroneous conclusion; for, as Professor Chaussier has remarked, “no disease, or affection, besides parturition, can possibly produce the whole series of signs above described.”
The secretion of milk, upon which such considerable stress has been laid in ancient as well as in modern times, it is now admitted may take place independently of pregnancy, and we are accordingly bound to reject the aphorism of Aristotle, “Lac habet, ergo peperit.” In the Causes Celèbres[[397]] there is an account of a girl, who, although a virgin, suckled an infant; and in the Sloane collection of manuscripts in the British Museum, a case of a woman is related, who, although she had not borne children for more than twenty years, actually suckled her grand-children, one after the other, at the age of 68! but, what is still more extraordinary, instances have occurred where men have been able to perform this duty. The Bishop of Cork[[398]] has related a case in which a man suckled his child after the loss of his wife; and in the personal narrative of Humboldt we have an analogous instance.[[399]]