VOL. LXXVII.] PHltOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 295 



A few days ago, I received from the country an account of a woman who was 

 delivered of 5 children at a birth in April last. As your extensive experience and 

 reading in this line of practice enable you to judge how far this fact is rare or in- 

 teresting, I submit it to you whether it deserves to be communicated to the r. s. 

 Mr. Hull, the gentleman who sent me the case, is a very sensible and ingenious 

 practitioner of physic at Blackburn, in Lancashire. He attended the labour 

 himself from beginning to end, and his character for fidelity and accuracy is well 

 known to me, as he was formerly a pupil at the hospital to which I am physician; 

 so that no fact can be better authenticated. He mentions also, that he has pre- 

 served all those 5 children in spirits ; and, if desired, he will send them for the 

 inspection of i.he Society.* Gilbert Blane. 



Margaret Waddington, aged 21, a poor woman of the township of Lower 

 Darwin, near Blackburn in Lancashire, formerly delivered of one child at the 

 full term of pregnancy, conceived a 2d time about the beginning of Dec. 1785, 

 and from that period became affected with the usual symptoms that attend breed- 

 ing. At the end of the first month, she became lame, complained of consider- 

 able pains in her loins, and the enlargement of her body was so remarkably 

 rapid, that she was then judged by her neighbours to be almost half gone with 

 child. At the end of the 2d month she found herself somewhat larger, and her 

 breeding complaints continued to increase. When the 3d month was completed, 

 she thought herself fully as large as she had formerly been in her Qth month, 

 and to her former symptoms of nausea, vomiting, lameness, and pain of the 

 loins, she had now added a distressing shortness of breath. She continued to 

 increase so rapidly in size, that she thought she could perceive herself growing 

 larger every day, and she was under the frequent necessity of widening her 

 clothes. When she reckoned herself 18 weeks gone, she first perceived some- 

 what indistinctly the motion of a child. By the 20th of April, 1786, all her 

 complaints were become much more distressing ; she had much tension and 

 pain over all the abdomen, her vomiting was incessant, and she now could not 

 make water but with the utmost difficulty. The symptoms being palliated by 

 Mr. Lancaster, she advanced in her pregnancy to Monday the 24th of April, 

 when being supposed to have arrived at the 20th week, she was seized with 

 labour pains. These continued gradually to increase till the next day, about 2 

 in the afternoon ; at which time I was sent for, Mr. Lancaster being absent, 

 and she was soon delivered of a small, dead, but not putrid, female child. The 

 pains continuing, this was soon followed by a 2d less child ; to this very soon 

 succeeded a 3d, larger than the first, which was alive ; to these a 4th soon fol- 

 lowed, somewhat larger than the first, and very putrid ; last of all, there soon 



* They were accordingly sent ; and having been exhibited to the Society when this paper was 

 read, were afterwards deposited m the Mxiseum of Mr. John Hunter. — Orig. 



