These statistics seem conscientious and reliable, and we are safe in taking them as indicative of the usual result, which discountenances the old reports of death as taking place some time before extraction.
Peuch is credited with statistics showing that in 453 operations 101 children gave signs of life, but only 45 survived.
During the Commune of Paris, Tarnier, one night at the Maternite, was called to an inmate who, while lying in bed near the end of pregnancy, had been killed by a ball which fractured the base of the skull and entered the brain.

He removed the child by Cesarean section and it lived for several days.

In another case a pregnant woman fell from a window for a distance of more than 30 feet, instant death resulting; thirty minutes at least after the death of the mother an infant was removed, which, after some difficulty, was resuscitated and lived for thirteen years.

Tarnier states that delivery may take place three-quarters of an hour or even an hour after the death of the mother, and he also quotes an extraordinary case by Hubert of a successful Cesarean operation two hours after the mother's death; the woman, who was eight months pregnant, was instantly killed while crossing a railroad track.
Hoffman records the case of a successful Cesarean section done ten minutes after death.

The patient was a woman of thirty-six, in her eighth month of pregnancy, who was suddenly seized with eclampsia, which terminated fatally in ten hours.