A RARE CASE.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 1028, 30 April 1883, Page 3

A RARE CASE.

(The Editor of the Australian Medical Gazette.) Dear Sir, —We send you a remarkable cutting, the truth of which we strongly doubt, and should be pleased to see your comments thereon,—Yours faithfully, De Yeaux & Co., Proprietors and Editors of the Weekly Advertiser, Christchurch, N.Z., March Ist, 1883. From the Patea Mail, Feb. 23. “ A most extraordinary and painful phenomenon has lately occurred in Warsaw. A lady died under somewhat peculiar circumstances, which gave rise to a report that her death had been caused by ber husband’s illtreatment. Hence, several weeks after the interment, her body was exhumed for j>ostmortem examination, when it was found that in the grave a perfectly healthy child had been born. This gives a startling new meaning to the word ‘ posthumous." (This case, though extraordinary, is possibly true, two similar cases being recorded, one in the Medical Gazette, rol. 46, p. 713, the ether in Casj?er's Vierteljahrsschrift, 1861, p. 186. It is more probable, however, that the woman was buried in a state of suspended animation, and that the birth took place during her life. If it took place after life had departed, it is certain it occurred almost immediately after death, and before the muscular contractility 'of the nterus had ceased, the body having been coffined very quickly, and the child remaining unnoticed prior to burial. —Ed. A.M.G.)