Letter received by Banks from Marmaduke Tunstall, 18 March1786 (Series 72.190) - No. 0002

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3 years of age, being calved twin with a bull Oct 1, 1782, by peculiar good fortune had another pair, Cow & Bull, calved the year ensuing, viz Nov: 30, 1793, have some doubts of this last twin ever proving pregnant, tho' she does not altogether agree with Mr Hs description of a free-martin, as she has certainly shown dispositions to bulling more than once, the former was so far from being coy in that respect, that she was for bulling at least at 3 quarters old . 

     Mr. Mackrel's letter to me was much posterior to that you mention, sent by him to Dr. Simmons in June 1784, mine being dated Nov: 21, 1785, in this he seems perfectly convinced, that whatever suspicions he might have entertained at first, the woman was by no means an impostor & on consulting some ingenious persons of the faculty in this neighbourhood, think the case far from impossible & not without precedents, especially in extra-uterine Conceptions;  you will find in the Phil: transact: vol 11 for the year 1676 p 979, the case of a woman, who had a child remaining in her for 26 years, again in a letter addressed to the late Dr Fothergil [Fothergill] by Mr. Bard Surgeon at New York, read in a society of Physicians at London & published in 2d vol of medical observations, Johnson, London 1763, p: 39, is an account of a woman delivered of an extra-uterine foetus 24 months after conception, having had a healthy living child born in in the interim;  in medial commentaries by a society of Physicians in Edinburgh published 1774 by Murray Fleet Street in a case related by Dr. Bell of Dublin of two foetusses extracted by incision from the abdomen of a living woman

 

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