. 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 im