REPORT OF A CASE OF PRECOCIOUS PUBERTY AND PREGNANCY IN 1834

Abstract

In 1834 Dr. D. Rowlett of Kentucky reported the following remarkable occurrence of precocious puberty and pregnancy in a 10-year-old girl.

Sally Deweese, daughter of John Deweese, was born in Butler county, Kentucky, on the 7th of April, 1824. She was of the ordinary size, but her hips and breasts began to grow rapidly in a few weeks after she was born, and at twelve months of age she began to menstruate, and her hips and breasts had become so large as to be the objects of common remark; and as she took no pains to conceal her condition, her menstruating so young, became a fact of public notoriety, which continued regular till some time in the year 1833, when she became pregnant, and on the 20th day of April, 1834, she was delivered of a healthy female child, weighing seven and three-fourth pounds. Thus, at the age of ten years and thirteen days, she became the mother of a child of ordinary size; which, however, refused to suck her, and has been so far raised by the bottle. It is as healthy as is usual for children to be when raised from the bottle, and at the time of taking these notes it weighed eight and three-fourth pounds, and its mother weighed one hundred pounds. She was four feet seven inches high and had the countenance of a girl not exceeding her in years, but is as intelligent as girls generally are at her age.

She was the fifteenth child her mother had given birth to, and was born when her mother was forty-five years of age.