Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine. George M. Gould
relates the particulars of the case of a white girl who began to menstruate at eleven years and four months, and who gave birth to an over-sized male child on January 21, 1872, when she was twelve years and nine months old. She had an abundance of milk and nursed the child; the labor was of about eighteen hours' duration, and laceration was avoided. He also speaks of a mulatto girl, born in 1848, who began to menstruate at eleven years and nine months, and gave birth to a female child before she reached thirteen, and bore a second child when fourteen years and seven months old. The child's father was a white boy of seventeen.
The following are some Indian statistics: 1 pregnancy at ten, 6 at eleven, 2 at eighteen, 1 at nineteen. Chevers speaks of a mother at ten and others at eleven and twelve; and Green, at Dacca, performed craniotomy upon the fetus of a girl of twelve. Wilson gives an account of a girl thirteen years old, who gave birth to a full-grown female child after three hours' labor. She made a speedy convalescence, but the child died four weeks afterward from bad nursing. The lad who acknowledged paternity was nineteen years old. King reports a well-verified case of confinement in a girl of eleven. Both the mother and child did well.
Robertson of Manchester describes a girl, working in a cotton factory, who was a mother at twelve; de La Motte mentions pregnancy before twelve; Kilpatrick in a negress, at eleven years and six months; Fox, at twelve; Hall, at twelve; Kinney, at twelve years, ten months, and sixteen days; Herrick, at thirteen years and nine months; Murillo, at thirteen years; Philippart, at fourteen years; Stallcup, at eleven years and nine months; Stoakley, at thirteen years; Walker, at the age of twelve years and eight months; another case, at twelve years and six months; and Williams, at eleven.
An editorial article in the Indian Medical Gazette of Sept., 1890, says:—
"The appearance of menstruation is held by the great majority of natives of India to be evidence and proof of marriageability, but among the Hindu community it is considered disgraceful that a girl should remain unmarried until this function is established. The consequence is that girls are married at the age of nine or ten years, but it is understood or professed that the consummation of the marriage is delayed until after the first menstrual period. There is, however, too much reason to believe that the earlier ceremony is very frequently, perhaps commonly, taken to warrant resort to sexual intercourse before the menstrual flux has occurred: it may be accepted as true that premenstrual copulation is largely practised under the cover of marriage in this country.
"From this practice it results that girls become mothers at the earliest possible period of their lives. A native medical witness testified that in about 20 per cent of marriages children were born by wives of from twelve to thirteen years of age. Cases of death caused by the first act of sexual intercourse are by no means rare. They are naturally concealed, but ever and anon they come to light. Dr. Chevers mentioned some 14 cases of this sort in the last edition of his 'Handbook of Medical Jurisprudence for India,' and Dr. Harvey found 5 in the medicolegal returns submitted by the Civil Surgeons of the Bengal Presidency during the years 1870–71-72.
"Reform must come from conviction and effort, as in every other case, but meantime the strong arm of the law should be put forth for the protection of female children from the degradation and hurt entailed by premature sexual intercourse. This can easily be done by raising the age of punishable intercourse, which is now fixed at the absurd limit of ten years. Menstruation very seldom appears in native girls before the completed age of twelve years, and if the 'age of consent' were raised to that limit, it would not interfere with the prejudices and customs which insist on marriage before menstruation."
In 1816 some girls were admitted to the Paris Maternite as young as thirteen, and during the Revolution several at eleven, and even younger. Smith speaks of a legal case in which a girl, eleven years old, being safely delivered of a living child, charged her uncle with rape. Allen speaks of a girl who became pregnant at twelve years and nine months, and was delivered of a healthy, 9-pound boy before the physician's arrival; the placenta came away afterward, and the mother made a speedy recovery. She was thought to have had "dropsy of the abdomen," as the parents had lost a girl of about the same age who was tapped for ascites. The father of the child was a boy only fourteen years of age.
Marvelous to relate, there are on record several cases of twins being born to a child mother. Kay reports a case of twins in a girl of thirteen; Montgomery, at fourteen; and Meigs reports the case of a young girl, of Spanish blood, at Maracaibo, who gave birth to a child before she was twelve and to twins before reaching fourteen years.
In the older works, the following authors have reported cases of pregnancy before the appearance of menstruation: Ballonius, Vogel, Morgagni, the anatomist of the kidney, Schenck, Bartholinus, Bierling, Zacchias, Charleton, Mauriceau, Ephemerides, and Fabricius Hildanus.
In some cases this precocity seems to be hereditary, being transmitted from mother to daughter, bringing about an almost incredible state of affairs, in which a girl is a grandmother about the ordinary age of maternity. Kay says that he had reported to him, on "pretty good" authority, an instance of a Damascus Jewess who became a grandmother at twenty-one years. In France they record a young grandmother of twenty-eight. Ketchum speaks of a negress, aged thirteen, who gave birth to a well-developed child which began to menstruate at ten years and nine months and at thirteen became pregnant; hence the negress was a grandmother at twenty-five years and nine months. She had a second child before she was sixteen, who began to menstruate at seven years and six months, thus proving the inheritance of this precocity, and leaving us at sea to figure what degree of grandmother she may be if she lives to an advanced age. Another interesting case of this nature is that of Mrs. C., born 1854, married in 1867, and who had a daughter ten months after. This daughter married in 1882, and in March, 1883, gave birth to a 9-pound boy. The youthful grandmother, not twenty-nine, was present at the birth. This case was remarkable, as the children were both legitimate.
Fecundity in the old seems to have attracted fully as much attention among the older observers as precocity. Pliny speaks of Cornelia, of the family of Serpios, who bore a son at sixty, who was named Volusius Saturnius; and Marsa, a physician of Venice, was deceived in a pregnancy in a woman of sixty, his diagnosis being "dropsy." Tarenta records the history of the case of a woman who menstruated and bore children when past the age of sixty. Among the older reports are those of Blanchard of a woman who bore a child at sixty years; Fielitz, one at sixty; Ephemerides, one at sixty-two; Rush, one at sixty; Bernstein, one at sixty years; Schoepfer, at seventy years; and, almost beyond belief, Debes cites an instance as taking place at the very advanced age of one hundred and three. Wallace speaks of a woman in the Isle of Orkney bearing children when past the age of sixty. We would naturally expect to find the age of child-bearing prolonged in the northern countries where the age of maturity is later. Capuron cites an example of child-birth in a woman of sixty; Haller, cases at fifty-eight, sixty-three, and seventy; Dewees, at sixty-one; and Thibaut de Chauvalon, in a woman of Martinique aged ninety years. There was a woman delivered in Germany, in 1723, at the age of fifty-five; one at fifty-one in Kentucky; and one in Russia at fifty. Depasse speaks of a woman of fifty-nine years and five months old who was delivered of a healthy male child, which she suckled, weaning it on her sixtieth birthday. She had been a widow for twenty years, and had ceased to menstruate nearly ten years before. In St. Peter's Church, in East Oxford, is a monument bearing an inscription recording the death in child-birth of a woman sixty-two years old. Cachot relates the case of a woman of fifty-three, who was delivered of a living child by means of the forceps, and a year after bore a second child without instrumental interference. She had no milk in her breasts at the time and no signs of secretion. This aged mother had been married at fifty-two, five years after the cessation of her menstruation, and her husband was a young man, only twenty-four years old.
Kennedy reports a delivery at sixty-two years, and the Cincinnati Enquirer, January, 1863, says: "Dr. W. McCarthy was in attendance on a lady of sixty-nine years, on Thursday night last, who gave birth to a fine boy. The father of the child is seventy-four years old, and the mother and child are doing well." Quite recently there died in Great Britain a Mrs. Henry of Gortree at the age of one hundred and twelve, leaving a daughter of nine years.
Mayham saw a woman seventy-three years old who recovered after delivery of a child. A most peculiar case is that of a widow, seventy years old, a native of Garches.