228 THE FCETUS. 



587. The law having determined that a child born before the one 

 hundred and eightieth day after marriage may, if it is pronounced to 

 be viable, be disowned by the husband, implicitly declares that viabi- 

 lity commences with the seventh month. As a legislative measure, 

 this decision is extremely wise, and could not be more just; but it 

 does not by any means prove that a foetus is never viable before the 

 end of the sixth month, nor that it is always so at the commence- 

 ment of the seventh. The determination as to the viability of the 

 child ought to depend on the degree of perfection attained by the 

 fostal organs, and not on the stage of pregnancy. But, as the evo- 

 lution of the foetus is not always in the same ratio, it follows that an 

 eight months' fcetus may be less viable than one of seven months. 



588. Should we refer on this head to the cases related by various 

 authors, we might have examples of children that were infinitely 

 small, of some born at four months or four months and a half, and 

 nevertheless became robust and vigorous men. Who is unacquainted 

 with the history of the celebrated Fortunio Liceti, related by Van 

 Swieten? His mother, frightened by the roughness of the sea while 

 passing from Reco to Rapallo, brought him into the world before 

 the sixth month of her pregnancy; he was not bigger than a hand; 

 his father had recourse to the heat of an oven to bring him up, and 

 notwithstanding all that, Fortunio lived to be seventy-nine years old. 

 An abortion, says Brousset, was born in 1748, at the fifth month of 

 pregnancy, and lived to the ninth month, without sucking, without 

 producing any excretion, or performing any other motion, save to 

 swallow a few drops of milk; but, four months after its birth, it sud- 

 denly cried, and sucked, and moved its limbs, so that at sixteen 

 months old it was stronger than children of that age commonly are. 

 To be sure, one ought really to have been, like Brousset, a witness 

 to such a miracle to be able to believe it. Thebesius also pretends 

 to have seen a foetus, born before the seventh month, which could 

 not cry until the ninth, but which was still very weak after the lapse 

 of a year. Pleissmann cites another such case, quite similar to that 

 of Brousset, except that the foetus was born at a more advanced stage 

 of the pregnancy. The daughter of P. Soranus, according to Car- 

 dan, came into the world at the sixth month: to nourish her they 

 were obliged to pour milk into her mouth by means of a funnel, 

 which did not prevent her from running a long career.* Millot, who, 



* Spigelius speaks of a man who was born at the commencement of the sixth 

 month, and who was obliged to be kept wrapped up in cotton for more than six 

 weeks. Montus says that the cup-bearer of Henry III was born at five months; 

 Avicenna, Diemerbroeck, Vallcsius, and Men;^ speak of facts nearly similar» and 

 quite as authentic. 



