502 NARROW PELVIS. 



Portions of the epidermis, and some of the hair, might, indeed, 

 become detached from some inflamed, gangrenous or ulcerated point, 

 without the child being dead: if this sign depended upon putrefaction, 

 it could in no case occur until after life had long ceased; in fine, I 

 can scarcely believe that any one could be deceived who should pay 

 a careful attention to all the circumstances.* 



1117. The odor that escapes from the vagina has always seemed 

 to me to have but little significancy, as long as the membranes are 

 unruptured; but after that, I regard it as one of the most certain 

 signs; it incontestably depends on the circumstance, that the air, by 

 gaining access to the uterine cavity while at a high temperature, 

 under ibe influence of the uterine contractions, actively promotes 

 the putrefaction of the liquids still remaining within the membranes; 

 this odor at times is rapidly manifested, and may, in the course of 

 a few hours, become almost insupportable. It would be difficult to 

 confound it with any other odor, such, for example, as that ex- 

 haled from an ulcer, or a suppurating surface of any kind; and up to 

 the present time I have never met with it where the child did not 

 afterwards come dead into the world. 



1118. As to the swelling of the hairy scalp; since it is produced 

 by the accumulation of fluids beyond the point of the head, which is 

 strictured more or less violently and for a longer or shorter period 

 by the os uteri, or the strait of the pelvis, it is evident that it will not 

 form, provided the child should be dead previously to the rupture of 

 the membranes; but, if the child should not die until after its forma- 

 tion, it might then continue, just as if death had not taken place; I do 

 not speak of the over-lapping and movableness of the cranial ^bones, 

 because they may too easily lead us into error, and also because 

 these two phenomena may depend upon causes far too diverse. 



Where it is possible to reach the umbilical cord, we can easily de- 

 termine whether it continues to pulsate or not; and I cannot readily 

 conceive how this sign could deceive a well informed practitioner, 

 as to the real state of the child; I know that the vessels of the cord 

 may suspend their pulsations, during each effort made by the womb 

 or by the mother, without the fcetus really running any great risks; 

 but we should not decide upon the child's death simply because we 

 have examined the cord during the presence of a pain, or because 



* Yet Baudelocque was near being deceived by such a symptom; he was on 

 the point of using the perforater, because a sloughing tumor on the scalp gave 

 him this very reason to suppose the foetus dead. By a sort of miracle of good 

 fortune, he was induced to lay aside the perforater, and resort to the forceps, 

 with which he delivered the woman of the cliild in perfect health with the ex- 

 ception of the gangrenous portion of the scalp. — 31. 



