Your humble Servant,
John Howard.
If you send a Person, let him bring a Letter from you.
[1] This Account was taken the 4th Instant at Guilford by Mr. Davenant.
[2] The Letters were directed to Mr. Davenant.
These Letters, with others to Persons of Distinction in Town, which all agreed with the above-mentioned, were sufficient to make me desirous of being convinced personally of a Fact of which there was no Instance in Nature. Accordingly on the 15th Instant, I attended the Honourable Mr. Molyneux, Secretary to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, who was inclin’d to enquire into the Truth of this extraordinary Case, and desir’d me to go with him to Guilford: We arrived there at about half an hour after two in the Afternoon. We sent to Mr. Howard, who came to us immediately, and told us that the Woman was actually in Labour of the fifteenth Rabbet. We had not been at his House long, before the Nurse who attends the Woman came to call Mr. Howard to her, she being then in one of her labour Pains.
She was lodged over against Mr. Howard’s House, we found her dress’d in her Stays, sitting on the Bed-side with several Women near her. I immediately examined her, and not finding the Parts prepared for her Labour, I waited for the coming on of fresh Pains, which hapned in three or four minutes, at which time I deliver’d her of the entire Trunk, strip’d of its Skin, of a Rabbet of about four Months growth, in which the Heart and Lungs were contained with the Diaphragm entire. I instantly cut off a piece of them, and tried them in Water; they seemed but just specifically lighter than it, and Mr. Molyneux pressing them to the Bottom they rose again very slowly; the Heart was very large, and its Foramen Ovale entirely open; the Lungs were remarkably small, and of a much darker Colour than commonly the Lungs are of such Rabbets, who have breathed for some time. No Person but my self touch’d her, from the first time that I had examined her, to the time of her being deliver’d by me: Her Pains were pretty smart, and lasted for some Minutes; they went off the Moment she was deliver’d, and she seem’d chearful and easy; walked by herself from the Bed-side to the Fire, and sat on a Chair, where I examined her; and found, that in the Course of the Fallopian Tubes, there were some Inequalities, but more sensibly on the right side of her Belly; which made me conjecture that the Rabbets were bred in those Tubes, and only came into the Uterus, when they gave her those Agitations, which, according to the account of Mr. Howard and of several other Persons, were sensibly felt many Hours before their Exclusion.
As there was no Blood nor Water that issued from the Vagina, after I had delivered her, I again examined that Part, and found it not in the least inflamed or lacerated.