Medicine: War Effort?

Did the war have something to do with it? To minds troubled by worldwide death recurred an old wives’ saying: nature tries to make up for man’s mass killings by multiple births. How else explain the widespread news of quintuplets, quadruplets, triplets and twins? Last month had seen U.S. Army Sergeant Bill Thompson’s British-born quadruplets (TIME, March 13), the Argentine Diligenti quintuplets (TIME, March 27), the Argentine quadruplets born (they soon died) the same week the Diligentis were discovered, the sextuplets Nicaragua claimed one day, denied the next. Last week Manhattan’s Sloane Hospital for Women had two unforgettable days:

On Wednesday, Mrs. Eleanor Zarief had quadruplets, three girls and a boy. Weights: 5 lb., 5 lb., 4 Ib. 12 oz., 4 Ib. 13 oz. All doing well.

Next day, Mrs. Muriel Bachant had triplets, all girls. Weights: 6 lb. 3 oz., 6 lb. 7 oz., 4 lb. 8 oz. All doing well.

Both mothers were put in the same hospital room. (New York Daily News headline MOMS OF QUADS, TRIPS IN TWIN BEDS.) The hospital’s staff was so demoralized by excitement that the authorities had to put up a sign: “Keep away.” It was directed at the student nurses.

According to the figures, triplets are due about once in 7,869 births, quadruplets once in 700,000. All that Sloane Hospital, the Diligentis and Sergeant Thompson had was a mild coincidence.

The coincidence also included the animal kingdom. The Philadelphia zoo’s favorite kangaroo, Susie, gave birth to twins —a very rare occurrence among kangaroos and the first U.S. record of a kangaroo multiple birth.