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Saviard saw an infant at the Hotel-Dieu in Paris in 1687 which had 40 digits, ten on each member. Annandale relates the history of a woman who had six fingers and two thumbs on each hand, and another who had eight toes on one foot. Meckel tells of a case in which a man had 12 fingers and 12 toes, all well formed, and whose children and grandchildren inherited the deformity.

In the Philosophical Transactions there is mentioned a child virtually born without a head who lived four days; and Le Duc records a case of a child born without brain, cerebellum, or medulla oblongata, and who lived half an hour. Brunet describes an anencephalous boy born at term who survived his birth. Saviard delivered an anencephalous child at term which died in thirty-six hours.

Saviard reported what he considered a rather unique case, in which the uterus was ruptured by external violence, the fetus being thrown forward into the abdomen and afterward extracted from an umbilical abscess. Birth of the Fetus Enclosed in the Membranes. Harvey says that an infant can rest in its membranes several hours after birth without loss of life.

Other older cases are as follows: l'Ecluse, seven days; the Ephemerides, four and six days; Col de Vilars, twelve days; Marcucci, eighteen days; Bartholinus, five days; Durande, five days; Boyer, five days; Capelle, twenty six hours; Fahner, eleven days; Marigues, thirteen days; Morgagni, eight days; la Motte, twelve hours; Rhodius, Riedlin, two days; Saviard, eleven days; Sennert, three days; Triller, fourteen days; and Tulpius, two and fifteen days; and Zittman, eight days.

Saviard informs us that he saw a patient at the Hotel Dieu who had a horn like that of a ram, instead of a nail, on each great toe, the extremities of which were turned to the metatarsus and overlapped the whole of the other toes of each foot. The skeleton of Simore, preserved in Paris, is remarkable for the ankylosis of all the articulations and the considerable size of all the nails.