Desiring an inquest, the coroner had the body exhumed, when, on opening the coffin, a well-developed male infant was found parallel to and lying on the lower limbs, the cord and placenta being entirely unattached from the mother.
Some time after her decease Harvey found between the thighs of a dead woman a dead infant which had been expelled postmortem.

Mayer relates the history of a case of a woman of forty-five who felt the movement of her child for the fourth time in the middle of November.

In the following March she had hemoptysis, and serious symptoms of inflammation in the right lung following, led to her apparent death on the 31st of the month.

For two days previous to her death she had failed to perceive the fetal movements.

She was kept on her back in a room, covered up and undisturbed, for thirty-six hours, the members of the family occasionally visiting her to sprinkle holy water on her face.