“The well-preserved fetal skeleton, so-called “Cristobal”, discovered in the grave No. 1 of the necropolis of Costebelle presents several pathological osseous lesions: periosteal appositions on the skull vault and on the long bones; osseous resorptions of different degree, which affect first of all the extremities of the long bones (particularly in the metaphyseal region) and the external cortex of the skull vault; localised sheathed calcifications principally at about the skull vault-level and on the distal extremities of left forearm, the left hand and foot.”[vii] 

"The character of the pathology appeared to me to be calcified membranes/tissues, rather than periosteal reaction," he says. "The skull lesions are unlike those of treponemal disease (e.g., congenital syphilis) and the dramatic forearm calcification is unlike anything we have previously witnessed in over 500 cases of adult syphilis, nor in the periosteal reaction that characterizes yaws and bejel-disorders in which children (though probably not fetuses) are frequently affected."[viii][ix]

“Now I myself once saw a woman who had become pregnant and the foetus had then died in utero; the again she conceived and the second foetus also died; and after a long while she got a swelling in the umbilicus which grew and eventually it opened and began to produce pus. I was called in to attend her, and I treated her for a long while but the wound did not heal up. So I applied to it certain very strongly drawing ointments, and then a bone came away from the place; then a few days passed and another bone came out; and I was mightily astonished a this, seeing that the abdomen is a place where there are no bones. I formed the opinion that these were bones from a dead foetus. So I investigated the place and got out many bones belonging to the head of the foetus. I continued this procedure and got a great number of bones, the woman being in the best of health; indeed she lived for quite a while like that, with a little pus being exuded from that place. I bring forward this uncommon occurrence here since it gives knowledge and help about the sort of treatment that the doctor who practices surgery may contrive.”[x]

Illustration of a Lithopedion in situ

In 1597, physician Israel Spach included in his gynaecological text an illustration of a Lithopedion in situ (that is, inside a woman's opened womb).[xi][xii] This had come from the thesis of the physician Jean d’Ailleboust, who had been called to the dissection of Madame Colombe Chatri, who had died on 16th May, 1582 in the French city of Sens [xiii], and who would become the physician to the Duc d’Alençon and King Henri IV of France [xiv].  The dissection, carried out by the physicians Claude le Noir and Iehan Couttas, discovered the following:

"They cut through the stomach and peritoneum, and viewed the prodigious growth, which was wrinkled and formed like a turkey's crest. It was hard and brittle like a shell, and covered with what seemed like scales. The surgeons 'plunged their razors into it', but without being able to penetrate the hard shell. After wearing out the edge of their knives on the hard tumour, they fetched mauls and a drill, and finally succeeded to break it. They felt the head and right shoulder of the lithopaedion, but it was not until they had broken off a large portion of the covering shell, and seen the wonderful sight inside, that they understood what they were dealing with.”[xv]

“The shape of the lithopaedion was roughly that of its rounded, calcified shell. The knees were bent, and the legs drawn up towards the chest. The feet and lower legs were fused by the calcific deposits. It could clearly be seen that the fetus was of the female sex. The head was slightly tilted to the right, and supported by the left arm. The right arm extended down towards the navel: its hand had been broken off through carelessness when the lithopaedion was extracted. The bones of the head were transparent, and the fontanelles were not closed. The skin of the head was partially covered with hair. The lithopaedion had one sole tooth, situated in the lower jaw.”[xvii]

“a perfect formed child…weighing 6 pounds avordepois.” It was removed “in the presence of about twenty persons…The position of the child was found with the occiput resting on the symphasis publis its face and front looking towards the spine or median line of the abdomen. It had no adhesions or connections with the mother except to the Falopian Tubes, and the blood vessels which nourished it, and which were given off from the mesenteric arteries.”[xxiii] Effectively, apart from the adhesion to the Fallopian Tube, “the child was almost floating in the abdomen.”[xxiv]

“This specimen was enveloped in a firm dense cartilage. The limbs trunk and head being situated in the best possible manner, for occupying the best and least possible space; the thighs flexed upon the body and the legs upon the thighs, the elbows resting upon the knees, the arm lying close upon the side, & fore arm and hand thrown diagonally across the chest the hand resting on the side of the cranium, the face thrown down upon the chest. One lower extremity and a large share of the uper of the same side were the only parts uncovered by this cartilaginous case; and there are covered by an ossific or earthy deposit.”[xxv]

Zahra Aboutalib, a 26 year old lady from a small village outside Casablanca, was rushed to her local hospital in 1955 after 48 hours of excruciating labour. The doctors told her she would need a caesarian section. Whilst she was waiting on the ward for her operation, she witnessed the painful death of a woman in childbirth. After seeing this, Zahra ran away from the hospital and back to her village. She suffered further terrible pains, but after a few days, they stopped. Her baby had died. But there was no miscarriage. There was a myth in her village that a baby can go to sleep inside its mother, and Zahra chose to believe this.