The History of Monsters. 53

Continuing further, we find in Pliny’s medical records that as many as twelve miscarriages from a single pregnancy have been observed. Johannes Schenck seems to confirm this history with a more recent account, recounting how the wife of Isibert, Count of Altorf, gave birth to three children at once. Her husband accused her of infidelity, believing it impossible for three children to be conceived from a single encounter with one man. However, a year later, while the husband was away, she gave birth to twelve boys. Fearing the scandal of ruined virtue, she ordered her midwife to drown eleven of them in a nearby river.

By chance, the father encountered the midwife and, seeing the covered box she carried, asked what it contained. The midwife replied that they were deformed puppies to be thrown into the river. Driven by curiosity, the Count pulled back the cover and discovered his eleven sons. After the midwife was granted a pardon, she revealed the whole affair. The Count kept the matter secret from his wife and ordered the boys to be raised; six years later, he had them all brought to the castle. There, in the presence of all his friends, he revealed his wife’s poor judgment but kindly forgave her. Albucasis records an even more numerous brood, noting that he observed fifteen fully formed fetuses in a miscarrying woman. Indeed, Avicenna adds that another woman cast out twenty-two.

In the region of Krakow, a respectable matron named Margaret, wife of Count Virboslaus, gave birth to over thirty-six live infants in a single delivery, as is read in the history of Poland. To these cases we might add the report of Albertus Magnus concerning a woman from whom seventy formed fetuses emerged. Finally, as a crowning example to the aforementioned, we may include what Fulgosius—a man of respected credit—records regarding Margaret, Countess of Holland. In that region where the Rhine flows into the Ocean, she gave birth to three hundred and sixty-six live children at once, all of whom were able to receive the mark of baptism.

The same story is repeated by Andreas Eburensis, and both are supported by the *Annals of Holland*. The history of Batavia records the event as follows: this noblewoman once insulted a poor woman who had given birth to twins—whom she was nursing at both breasts while begging for alms—claiming that two children could not be born from one husband. The poor woman, calling upon God as a witness to her unstained virtue, prayed that the Countess would bear as many offspring as there are days in the year if her own honor were true. It is said that the truth of the event proved the efficacy of those prayers through an incredible birth. To this day, a tablet remains as an eternal memorial of the event, inscribed with these words:

The daughter of the illustrious Lord Florentius, Count of Holland, whose mother was Matilda, daughter of Henry, Duke of Brabant, and who also had as a brother William, King of the Germans: this aforementioned Lady Margaret, in the year of Salvation 1276, in the forty-second year of her age, on Good Friday at nine o’clock in the morning, gave birth to 365 live infants of both sexes. After they received the Sacrament of Baptism in a basin from the venerable Bishop Lord Guido the Suffragan in the presence of several nobles and magnates—the males being named John and the females Elizabeth—the souls of all of them, together with their mother's soul, returned to God to live eternally. Their bodies rest beneath this stone.

But let the credibility of this matter rest with the authors.

Now that enough has been said regarding the timing of birth and the number of offspring, it remains for us to discuss the manner of birth itself. When the fetus is mature and fully formed, the pregnant woman is seized by labor pains due to the force of the infant, which turns and pushes downward for the sake of exiting. When the membranes are ruptured by this force and the opening of the womb is unlocked, the fluids begin to flow. The fetus rolls toward the mouth of the uterus head-first; this is the true, legitimate, and natural form of birth: when the head is brought to the opening first, with the hands folded over the hips.

This is seen in these figures, the first of which shows the natural position of a perfect infant in the womb before it hastens toward its exit, while the second shows the form of a fetus naturally hurrying toward its emergence.

Natural birth.