Extraordinary Families.

Evening Star, Issue 8530, 1 June 1891, Page 3

Extraordinary Families.

j Mr George Fey, surgeon of the Whitworth Hospital, after searohing the wards of 126,956 lying-in oases at St. Thomas's, Guy's, and St. George's Hospitals, has been unable to find an instance of four at a birth. There has been only one such case among the 226,000 cases at the Rotunda Lying-in Hospital in Dublin. This does not prove, however, that quadruple births never ooour. It only proves that the great majority of plural births go to the general praotitioner. In his recently • published pamphlet on the Bubjeot, Mr Fey quotes quite an imposing array of cases in whioh four, or even five, children have been born at once. Some extraordinary instances are recorded. There was Wassilief, the Russian, who was presented to the Czarina, and who was alive in 1872. He had been married twice, and was the father of eighty-seven ohildren. His first wife commenced with fours, whioh she had four times in succession, and then had triplets seven times in succession, and she wound up with sixteen Bets of twins. The second wife had six sets of twins and two sets of triplets. In another case a shopkeeper's wife had triplets seven years in succession. A case reported from Boston was that of a girl married at fourteen, who in eighteen years had twenty-one children, the last twelve being born in three and ahalf years, in five instalments. These are all modern, and apparently well-authenticated cases.