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Quintuplet and sextuplet births in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

John Benjamin Nichols
John Benjamin Nichols*
Affiliation:
Advisory Medical Director, Acacia Mutual Life Insurance Company Washington, D.C., U.S.A.

Extract

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In the course of study and publication of various aspects of natality and birth statistics, the writer has had occasion to unearth and compile the reports and records of quintuplet and sextuplet births which have occurred in the United States. Seventeen cases of such quintuplet births have been found, mostly well attested; and five of sextuplets, two well attested and three not completely verified.

The source, character, and reliability of the information on which the records of quintuple and other high multiple births are based are matters for careful consideration and evaluation.

Of the 17 quintuplet cases here reported 12 may be accepted as well verified: either on the authority of the attending physicians by their reports published in medical journals, by formal certification of the births to public registries of vital statistics, and statements obtained by personal correspondence. Most of the cases were reported in the newspapers; but such accounts, especially of local and contemporary cases, publicised by responsible newspapers and news-gathering agencies, may usually with due discrimination be accepted as quite reliable, especially when substantiated by photographs or verifiable from other sources. The information concerning one case is derived from a newspaper account which there is no reason to question; two of the cases (1826) were reported in a high-class newspaper nearly a year later from the physician's old records; one news story is quite hearsay in character; and one case is based on family statements lacking in specific details.

Type
Research Article
Information
Acta geneticae medicae et gemellologiae: twin research , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , May 1954 , pp. 143 - 152
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Twin Studies 1954

References

1 Articles by the Author:

The sex composition of human families. American Anthropologist, 1905, VII, 24–36 Google Scholar.

The numerical proportions of the sexes at birth. Memoirs of the American Antropological Association, 1907, I, 245–300 Google Scholar.

Quintuplets and fecundity. Medical Annals of the District of Columbia, 1950, XIX, 601–607 Google Scholar.

Statistics of births in the United States. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1952, LXIV, 376–381 Google Scholar.

Plural births in the United States. Western Journal of Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1953, LXI, 229–236 Google Scholar.