boy, Riccardo, in a Rome hospital. She had been impregnated by a donated egg that had been fertilized with sperm from her sixty-four-year-old husband.
Curiosities
MEDICAL science is giving new meaning to the phrase, ‘putting something away for your child’s future’. An increasing number of parents are putting away the blood from their baby’s umbilical cord. The blood is being touted as an insurance policy families should have on hand in case their child contracts a life-threatening illness. The blood is collected from the placenta after the umbilical cord has been cut. It is tested for infection, then cryogenically frozen and stored in liquid nitrogen. The blood can be thawed and used to treat leukaemia, malignant tumours, immune diseases, anaemia, lymphoma, breast cancer and genetic disorders.
THE Maternity Centre Association in New York organizes preparation classes for children who will be attending the birth of their siblings. They are taught about conception, birth, and how to change nappies.
ON an average day in the USA: 10,501 babies are born, and 5,937 people die. 178 babies are conceived by artificial insemination, of which ninety-six are conceived with sperm from a known donor, and forty are conceived with sperm from a sperm bank. 389 children are adopted, 1,994 babies are born to single mothers, 2,531 babies are born by Caesarean section. 217 sets of twins are born, five sets of triplets are born, ninety-eight babies are born away from a hospital, and 280 babies are delivered by midwives. 1,109,589 condoms are sold, of which 443,836 are purchased by women.
Courting Customs
DURING the reign of Queen Anne, St Valentine’s Day was celebrated with an unusual game. Men put numbers in a bowl, and the women did the same. The numbers were then drawn and the men and women with the same numbers spent the day together, regardless of their marital status.
UNTIL the last century, ‘bundling’ was a normal part of courting among the Dutch and German immigrants in America. When a young man went courting, especially in the winter, the girl’s parents would let him stay overnight in the same bed as their daughter, provided they both kept their clothes on, or bundled up in the bedcovers. There was a practical reason for this – the family did not have to burn precious wood in the evening, and the boy did not have to walk miles home on a cold night. Bundling boards were often used, which separated the couple while they were in bed. This custom still survives among the Amish in Pennsylvania.
WHEN a gentleman met a lady in public in eighteenth-century France, he was expected to kiss her on the neck.
I Thee Wed
MARRIAGE began in prehistoric times. When a man saw a woman he desired who was from another tribe, he would take her by force. These ‘capture marriages’ were legal in England until the thirteenth century. By that time, when the groom was going to abduct his chosen bride, he would take along his strongest friend or best warrior, in case of trouble with uncooperative relatives. This friend became known as ‘the best man’.
Later, marriage became more of a trade between the groom and the father. The word ‘wedd’ meant the groom’s pledge to marry in exchange for horses, land, cash, etc. The wedding was the actual exchange of goods. Sometimes the father of the bride would not let the groom see his intended for fear of the deal being cancelled if he disliked the look of her. So when the father gave his daughter away, the groom would lift the veil to see her face for the first time.
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