THE QUINTUPLETS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22320, 21 July 1934, Page 14

THE QUINTUPLETS

A NATIONAL STIR Once in • 41,000,000 human births quintuplets are given to the world, the experts have reckoned. Thus when five female infants were born to an Ontario couple on May 28 the event was ">nc which aroused intense interest, which deepened and broadened as the babies lived and gained weight day by day until alj known records for quintuple longevity nad been broken. The parents are Mr and Mrs Ovila Dionne, a French-Canadian couple married 10 years ago when Mrs Dionne was 15. They bad six other children before the quintuplets arrived, all single births, and five of them are living—Ernest, Rose, Theresa, Daniel, and Pauline. The five who raised to sis the number of Dionne children under one year were born within a half-hour on the morning of May 28, three of them before the arrival of Dr A. R; Dafoe, of Corbail, a town in Northern Ontario near wbieb is the Dionn e farm. They were perfect in form, but premature, ano" the five of them weighed 131 b 6oz when the da»tfd father put them on a potato \scale. There was no hospital within reach, and Dr Dafoe, a country physician hitherto unknown to fame, had to meet the emergency with such equipment as was available in a very modest backwoods farmhouse. He cradled the babies in baskets until days later incubators were made available. Neighbours were pressed into service as nurses until professionals could be secured. Diets had to be improvised, and the babies ted from eyedroppers. For a time the condition of the mother caused the doctor great anxiety, but she was saved, and in a few days was photographed smiling at her extraordinary family. Help was not long in arriving when news of the multiple births wept abroad. Public men. sent gifts, and congratulations came from far and wide. Medical men and societies everywhere ehowel intense interest, and the statisticians had a field day. Managers of the World's Fair in Chicago offered lavish tonus if the babies might be Shown there, but Dr Dafoe declared that they must not bo moved this summer. Individual incubators were given. The Ontario Government and the Red Cross Society gave, their help, and the Government's highways department rer paired the road which Dr Dafoe must take from his home to the Dionne plncv. The Dominion Government admitted free of duty gifts sent generously from other countries. Reporters ami photographers flocked t 6 Corbeil, and the daily pronouncement of the attending physician for days had frontpage space in the newspapers. The. babies were baptised by the parish priest shortly after their birth as Yvonne, Annette, Cecile, Emilie, and Mario. Ten days old they had lost weight, and in the aggregate tipped the scales nt not much more than ten pounds—Marie the tiniest at 2550z — but nt that stage tbey were gainiag again and Dr Dafoe permitted himself some optimism as to the outcome.