[A pregnancy of 10-years duration]. / Et "tiaarigt Svangerskab"

In January 1813 the peasant woman Randi Jonsdatter from Kvikne in Hedmark had been pregnant for 10 years. One day she slipped in her cattle-shed, and soon after "gave birth" to the remains of a decomposed stone child (lithopaedion) through an incision above her navel. The woman, who was about 50 years old, lived for many years after the "birth". This is the earliest known Norwegian case of a lithopaedion, a dead calcified fetus from an extra uterine pregnancy. The case is documented in a letter written only three months after the event. This letter is now archived in The Norwegian National Library's Manuscript Collection. The case was also published by the physician Christian Stengel at the Røros mines, in the medical periodical EYR: in 1827. Stone children occur very rarely. Only two other cases, from 1858 and 1885, are known in Norway.

Surgical accountability in the 1880s: the death of Susan Nixon.

Susan Nixon died in 1881 following a surgical error. Her surgeon, Dr W. E. Warren, excised a normal 7-month gravid uterus under the misapprehension that he was removing a tubular pregnancy. It is believed that Mrs Nixon was the first woman in Australia to have an abdominal hysterectomy and the second to have a live Caesarean section. The surgical misadventure that resulted in Mrs Nixon's death became a public scandal, which gained currency through both parliamentary debate and the popular press. The purpose of referring to this case is to explore the mechanisms of accountability that surgeons faced in the 1880s--a decade of rapid change in the practice of surgery. The response of late nineteenth century society to surgical error and the resultant reaction of the medical profession have resonances that are relevant to surgeons practising today.

The power of care: the Women's Hospital 1884-1914.

The effectiveness of late-nineteenth-century nursing care should not be underestimated. The archive of patient records at Melbourne's Women's Hospital reveals a commitment to patient care that more often than not made the difference between life and death in the recovery from major surgery or post-partum infection. These records suggest the need to reassess the role of medical care in the mortality transition after 1850.

The earliest known case of a lithopaedion.

A lithopaedion, or stone-child, is a dead fetus, usually the result of a primary or secondary abdominal pregnancy, that has been retained by the mother and subsequently calcified. This paper describes the earliest known case of this phenomenon. It was discovered in 1582, at the autopsy of a 68-year-old woman in the French city of Sens, and described in a thesis by the physician Jean d'Ailleboust. The woman had carried her lithopaedion for 28 years. In this historical vignette, the lithopaedion of Sens is compared to later instances of this phenomenon. The ultimate fate of the lithopaedion specimen, which was widely traded throughout Europe in the 1600s before finally ending up in Copenhagen, is traced.