OF UNTIMELY BIRTHS.
When the fruit of the womb comes forth before the seventh month, before
it comes to maturity, it is abortive; and, in effect, the child proves
abortive in the eighth month. And why children born in the seventh and
ninth month may live, and not in the eighth month may seem strange, yet
it is true. Hippocrates gives a reason, viz. the infant being perfect in
the seventh month, desires more air and nutriment; and it labours for a
passage to get out; and if it has not strength sufficient to break the
membranes and come forth, it shall continue in the womb till the ninth
month, and in that time may again be strengthened; but if it strive
again in the eighth month, and be born, it cannot live, because the day
of its birth is either past or to come. For, in the eighth month, saith
Aven, he is weak and infirm; and, therefore, being then cast into the
cold air, his spirits cannot be supported.
_Cause._—Untimely births may be caused by cold; or by humidity weakening
the faculty; and the fruit cannot be retained till the due time; by
dryness or emptiness, defrauding the child of nourishment; by fluxes,
phlebotomy, and other evacuations; by inflammations of the womb.
Sometimes it is caused by laughter, joy, anger and fear. Abortion also
may be caused by corrupt air, filthy odours, and especially by the smell
of the snuff of a candle; also by falls, blows, violent exercise,
leaping, dancing, &c.
_Signs._—Signs of future abortion are, extenuation of the breasts, flux
of watery milk, pain in the womb, heaviness in the head, unusual
weariness in the hips and thighs, flowing of the menses. Signs
foretelling the fruit of the dead in the womb, are hollowness in the
eyes, pain in the head, anguish, horror, paleness of the face and lips,
gnawing of the stomach, no motion of the infant, coldness and looseness
of the mouth of the womb, and thickness of the belly, and watery and
bloody excrements come from the matrix.