Note 350 — TENANT TO THE COURTESEY.

But it has been doubted whether the child may not be heard to cry in utero; Mr. Derham (Phil. Trans. vol. 26. p. 485) has given an account of a case of Vagitus Uterinus, in which the child is said to have cried for near five weeks before delivery, and what is equally extraordinary, the author professes to credit the story! Etmuller, in his Dissertation “De abstruso respirationis humanæ negotio,” c. 9. agrees with Diemerbroeck in considering such a phenomenon as impossible, and attributes the noise to flatulence. The learned Verzascha of Basil gives a long catalogue of cases of Vagitus Uterinus, in his third Observ. Medic. see also Dr. Needham’s work “De formato fœtu.”—Christian II. King of Denmark, is said to have cried before he was born. We must, however require very powerful testimony to shake our incredulity upon this subject, and we should then be rather inclined to believe the event with Livy, as a prodigy of Nature, than to consider it, with Derham, as a natural phenomenon.