Medicine: Mother of 59

Doctors across the nation last week were discussing the almost incredible case of Mrs. Fred J. Turley of Helena, Ark. At 59, Mrs. Turley had given birth to a healthy (5 lbs. 14 oz.) baby boy.

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 ago.

Mrs. Turley was no Sarah,* but there are few cases on record of childbearing at 59. In the 18th Century, Lucas Debes wrote of a Scandinavian woman who supposedly became pregnant at 103. Pliny reported that Cornelia of the family of Serpius bore a son at 60. Probably the oldest case known to scientific record, reported in 1882, is a Scottish woman who gave birth to her 22nd child at 62.

* Wife of Abraham, who at 90 gave birth to Isaac (Genesis 17: 77).