Note 179 — Two Notes on the Legal Time for Human Birth. (From Hargrave’s Jurisconsult Exercitations)

In the close of the first book of Paulus Zacchias’s famous Quæstiones Medicolegales, there is a full discussion of the point of filiation, as between two husbands, where a woman soon after the death of her first husband marries a second. The question is raised in these words. “Filius mulieris, quæ illico ab obitu conjugis alteri nupsit, et novem decemve mensium spatio peperit; cujusdam præsumi debeat.” See Paul. Zacch. lib. 1. tit. 5 quæstio ultima. The same point is investigated in the learned treatise by Alphonsus a Caranza, De Partu Naturali et Legitimo. See cap. 26. s. 71. The first book of Paulus Zacchias, who was a physician at Rome, first came out in 1621. The tract by Alphonsus a Caranza was first published about five years afterwards.