THE FCETUS. 201 



516. The weight of a foetus is generally six pounds, frequently 

 six and a half or seven, sometimes eight, and rarely nine or ten 

 pounds. Among four thousand children, born at the Maternite at 

 Paris in a given time, Madame Lachapelle never met with one 

 weighing as much as twelve pounds. Baudelocque, who had a case 

 where the child weighed twelve pounds and three quarters, main- 

 tains that it is incredible that a larger one was ever seen; the weight 

 of the child also, according to Chaussier, is frequently only five, 

 four, and sometimes three, or two and a half pounds; but in the 

 latter instances, it seems to me evident that pregnancy had not 

 reached its full term. 



517. Out of the profession, we daily hear of children weighing 

 fifteen, eighteen, twenty, twenty-five, and even thirty pounds at birth: 

 those stories too, which may be found in many authors of the six- 

 teenth, seventeenth, and even of the eighteenth century, are owing 

 to the fact, that persons who will not take the trouble to weigh such 

 children, very easily attribute a weight of twelve or fifteen pounds to 

 children that actually weigh only seven or eight. In fact, a new 

 born child of eight or nine pounds is enormous; the persons sur- 

 rounding the lying-in woman, when they see such an one, rarely fail 

 to cry out that it is a child of twelve or fifteen pounds; and it is 

 very likely that, in order to render the fact still more curious, four or 

 five pounds will be added to its weight after the fifth or sixth repeti- 

 tion of the story. In order to reduce such fables, which are founded 

 upon gross errors of observation, to their real value, it is only neces- 

 sary to reflect that thirty pounds is the weight of children of from 

 two to three years of age.* 



518. If the absolute length of the foetus is subject to such great 

 varieties, it is easy to conceive that the relative length of difiierent 

 parts of it cannot be more precise and determinate. Nevertheless, 

 we are sometimes obliged in medical jurisprudence to have recourse 

 to it in order to determine the age of a given foetus. According to 

 Chaussier, taking eighteen inches as a mean term, there are ten 

 inches and four lines from the vertex to the navel, and seven inches 

 eight lines from the navel to the sole of the foot; eleven inches nine 

 lines from the pubis to the vertex; six inches three lines from the 

 pubis to the sole of the foot; two inches three lines from the clavicle 



* Nevertheless, I beg leave to affirm, that new-born children weighing 10 

 pounds are by no means rare in the United States. I have weighed many at 11^ 

 pounds and several at 12 pounds. A few years since a lady in this city gave 

 birth to a child of 13^ pounds, carefully weighed by me. She died a few days 

 afterwards with puerperal fever. I have already noted a case of twins the sum 

 of whose weight was I62 pounds. — M. 



18* 



