Word: fetal
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Louis William Mara-ventano was asked in his Yonkers (N.Y.) office was: "What am I, a man or a woman?" "Joan" (the real name was withheld) was a pseudohermaphrodite* whose external genitals resembled both male and female organs. Something had gone wrong (doctors are not sure just how) during fetal development when the time came for the undifferentiated sex organs to become either completely male or completely female. The condition occurs in about one in 1,000 births; accurate figures are hard to come by because of family reticence...
...feminine arms and end in marvelous hands, small and of delicate design ... His huge stomach, drawn tight and smooth as a sphere, rests on strong legs . . . that end in large feet pointing outward in an obtuse angle as if to take in all the earth ... He sleeps in a fetal position and when awake moves with elegant slowness as if he lived in liquid . . . Women . . . would like always to have him in their arms like a newborn baby...
Last July Mrs. Turley began feeling "queer." In October she consulted Dr. William Ellis Jr. At first he thought she had a tumor, but in December he heard the fetal heart beat and knew that she was pregnant. The baby was born prematurely a fortnight...
...told her to take it easy; there was nothing much they could do about it then. Her trouble was that the by-pass between the aorta and the main artery to the lungs failed to close some time after birth. The open by-pass is vital to the fetus (fetal blood does not get oxygen from the lungs before birth), but it is harmful in later life because it puts an extra strain on the heart...
Obstetricians had an explanation for the rare occurrence. An infant who begins to breathe in the womb is in danger of drowning in amniotic fluid. But when the fetal sac breaks and the fluid flows out, the unborn child can get a few lungsful of the air entering the womb through the birth passage. The rhythm of the laboring mother's contracting uterus acts as an artificial respirator...