Note 359 — Of Monsters and Hermaphrodites, legally considered.

In writing a work which is calculated for the instruction of so wide a range of readers, the authors have felt some difficulty in adjusting their Zero; but when they assure their scientific friends that they have heard a provincial attorney advocating the legality of smothering a hydrophobic patient, they trust that they will stand excused, even should their precautions be apparently trivial. Two women were tried at the York Assizes in 1812, for drowning a child, which was born with some mal-formation of the cranium, in consequence of which, it was likely that it could not survive many hours. There did not appear to have been any concealment on the part of the prisoners, who were not aware of the illegality of the act.