212 THE FCETUS. 



for three years, during which time the woman conceived and brought 

 forth a well formed child; and another case for which we are in- 

 debted to M. Cliet, in which it is said, that in a woman who died 

 suddenly, one foetus was found behind the womb in the excavation 

 of the pelvis, and another in the cavity of the womb itself. 



543. 4lh. When the womb is divided into two cavities by a perpen- 

 dicular septum, and these cavities open separately into the vagina, 

 it is evident that two germs may be fecundated at intervals more or 

 less remote; in a word, that superfcetation may take place. This 

 is the way in which the following fact ought to be understood, which 

 has been cited by M. Cassan, and collected by Madame Boivin: a 

 woman forty years of age was delivered of a little girl on the 15th 

 of March 1810; the cavity of the uterus, which was already con- 

 tracted, ivas examined without any thing being found in it; and 

 yet this woman, whose abdomen had remained pretty large, gave 

 birth to another child on the 12th of May of the same year. 



544. We ought also to admit the existence, or at least the possi- 

 bility of another kind of superfcetation. A woman at Charleston 

 gave birth on the same day to twin children, one of which was black 

 and the other white, and accounted for it by stating that after leaving 

 the arms of her husband in the morning, one of his negroes, armed 

 with a pistol, came and compelled her to have connection with him. 

 A negro woman at Guadaloupe brought forth two full sized boys, 

 one a black and the other a mulatto, and confessed she had had 

 connection on the same evening with a negro and a white man. 

 Another negro woman had three children at a birth; one black, one 

 white and the third a cabre. A white servant girl in Montgomery 

 county brought into the world at the same lying-in a white girl and 

 a boy that was perfectly block. A negro and a white servant both 

 disappeared upon learning that the girl was pregnant. According 

 to M. Gardien, M. Valentin has related a case similar to the one 

 above. A mare foaled a colt and a young mule at an interval of a 

 quarter of an hour; she had been covered by a horse, and five days 

 after that by an ass. 



545. Granting all possible authenticity to these observations, and 

 supposing their correctness to be demonstrated, the ideas of physio- 

 logists that prevail at the present day admit of their easy explana- 

 tion. Two ovules may become impregnated, one after the other, in 

 a woman who grants her favors to two or more men on the same 

 day or in the space of two or three days, that is to say, up to the 

 moment when the excitement of the first fruitful coition occasions 

 the eff'usion of that coagulable lymph in the cavity of the womb 

 which afterwards becomes the membrana caduca. 



