of
the menses, and in which there was also a steady belief in the
existence of pregnancy. He has not so followed up these cases as to
know if in them the fat fell away with speed when once the patient was
assured that no child existed within her."

Hirst, in an article on the difficulties in the diagnosis of pregnancy,
gives several excellent photographs showing the close resemblance
between several pathologic conditions and the normal distention of the
abdomen in pregnancy. A woman who had several children fell sick with a
chest-affection, followed by an edema. For fifteen months she was
confined to her bed, and had never had connection with her husband
during that time. Her menses ceased; her mammae became engorged and
discharged a serous lactescent fluid; her belly enlarged, and both she
and her physician felt fetal movements in her abdomen. As in her
previous pregnancies, she suffered nausea. Naturally, a suspicion as to
her virtue came into her husband's mind, but when he considered that
she had never left her bed for fifteen months he thought the pregnancy
impossible. Still the wife insisted that she was pregnant and was
confirmed in the belief by a midwife. The belly continued to increase,
and about eleven months after the cessation of the menses she had the
pains of labor. Three doctors and an accoucheur were present, and when
they claimed that the fetal head presented the husband gave up in
despair; but the supposed fetus was born shortly after, and proved to
be only a mass of hydatids, with not the sign of a true pregnancy.
Girard of Lyons speaks of a female who had been pregnant several times,
but again experienced the signs of pregnancy. Her mammae were engorged
with a lactescent fluid, and she felt belly-movements like those of a
child; but during all this time she had regular menstruation. Her
abdomen progressively increased in size, and between the tenth and
eleventh months she suffered what she thought to be labor-pains. These
false pains ceased upon taking a bath, and with the disappearance of
the other signs was dissipated the fallacious idea of pregnancy.

There is mentioned an instance of medicolegal interest of a young girl
who showed all the signs of pregnancy and confessed to her parents that
she had had commerce with a man. The parents immediately prosecuted the
seducer by strenuous legal methods, but when her ninth month came, and
after the use of six baths, all the signs of pregnancy vanished