Prodigious Births

In a two-room log cabin near Senath, Mo., a white sharecropper named Jim Bridges sat waiting for his 35-year-old wife to bear their sixth child one gloomy afternoon last week. He hoped this one would not die as four of the others had. Old Dr. Fred Speidel and three neighbor women had come over to help Pearl Bridges through her time.

The sun set bleakly. Jim Bridges got out of his chair, lit the oil lamp and sat down again. At 6:30 Pearl Bridges gave birth to a boy, at 6:32 to a girl, at 6:34 to a girl, at 6:36 to a girl. Jim Bridges fainted.

According to statistics, 87 sets of quadruplets and one set of quintuplets must be born somewhere in the world each year. In accordance with this multiple-birth rule, in addition to the Bridges quadruplets last week quintuplets were born (dead) to an unnamed North Carolina woman confined in Duke Hospital at Durham, and quadruplets (living) to a Madame Yves Le Louarer in Brittany, France. Because no one has any rule for telling where the multiple-birth lightning will strike, only large urban communities are medically prepared for it. No one expected a prodigious childbirth in the Bridges log cabin last week. When it did occur, Dr. Speidel, who delivered a dead set of quadruplets 30 years ago, imperturbably anointed the four Bridges children with hog lard, wrapped them in towels and rags. He told the wide-eyed neighbor women to give the babies, who weighed only 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 lb. each, "a little sugar water now and then." Next morning the boy and a girl died, next day a girl. The survivor, transported 150 mi. over muddy roads to Memphis, had a chance of living.

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