Weill describes the case of a woman of twenty-three who gave birth to a robust boy on the 16th of June, 1877, and suckled him eleven months. This birth lasted one hour. She became pregnant again and was delivered under the following circumstances: She had been walking on the evening of September 5th and returned home about eleven o'clock to sleep. About 3 A.M. she awoke, feeling the necessity of passing urine. She arose and seated herself for the purpose. She at once uttered a cry and called her husband, telling him that a child was born and entreating him to send for a physician. Weill saw the woman in about ten minutes and she was in the same position, so he ordered her to be carried to bed. On examining the urinal he found a female child weighing 10 pounds. He tied the cord and cared for the child. The woman exhibited little hemorrhage and made a complete recovery. She had apparently slept soundly through the uterine contractions until the final strong pain, which awoke her, and which she imagined was a call for urination.
Samelson says that in 1844 he was sent for in Zabelsdorf, some 30miles from Berlin, to attend Hannah Rhode in a case of labor. She had passed easily through eight parturitions. At about ten o'clock in the morning, after a partially unconscious night, there was a sudden gush of blood and water from the vagina; she screamed and lapsed into an unconscious condition. At 10.35 the face presented, soon followed by the body, after which came a great flow of blood, welling out in several waves. The child was a male middle-sized, and was some little time in making himself heard. Only by degrees did the woman's consciousness return. She felt weary and inclined to sleep, but soon after she awoke and was much surprised to know what had happened. She had seven or eight pains in all. Schultze speaks of a woman who, arriving at the period for delivery, went into an extraordinary state of somnolence, and in this condition on the third day bore a living male child.
Berthier in 1859 observed a case of melancholia with delirium which continued through pregnancy. The woman was apparently unconscious of her condition and was delivered without pain.
Cripps mentions a case in which there was absence of pain in parturition. Depaul mentions a woman who fell in a public street and was delivered of a living child during a syncope which lasted four hours. Epley reports painless labor in a patient with paraplegia. Fahnestock speaks of the case of a woman who was delivered of a son while in a state of artificial somnambulism, without pain to herself or injury to the child. Among others mentioning painless or unconscious labor are Behrens (during profound sleep), Eger, Tempel, Panis, Agnoia, Blanckmeister, Whitehill, Gillette, Mattei, Murray, Lemoine, and Moglichkeit.
Rapid Parturition Without Usual Symptoms.--Births unattended by symptoms that are the usual precursors of labor often lead to speedy deliveries in awkward places. According to Willoughby, in Darby, February 9, 1667, a poor fool, Mary Baker, while wandering in an open, windy, and cold place, was delivered by the sole assistance of Nature, Eve's midwife, and freed of her afterbirth.
The poor idiot had leaned against a wall, and dropped the child on the cold boards, where it lay for more than a quarter of an hour with its funis separated from the placenta. She was only discovered by the cries of the infant. In "Carpenter's Physiology" is described a remarkable case of instinct in an idiotic girl in Paris, who had been seduced by some miscreant;the girl had gnawed the funis in two, in the same manner as is practised by the lower animals. From her mental imbecility it can hardly be imagined that she had any idea of the object of this separation, and it must have been instinct that impelled her to do it. Sermon says the wife of Thomas James was delivered of a lusty child while in a wood by herself. She put the child in an apron with some oak leaves, marched stoutly to her husband's uncle's house a half mile distant, and after two hours' rest went on her journey one mile farther to her own house; despite all her exertions she returned the next day to thank her uncle for the two hours' accommodation. There is related the history of a case of a woman who was delivered of a child on a mountain during a hurricane, who took off her gown and wrapped the child up in it, together with the afterbirth, and walked two miles to her cottage, the funis being unruptured.
