. . . And How They Grew

(See front cover)

This week, in the private hospital where they have lived since they were a few weeks old, the Dionne Quintuplets celebrate their third birthday, an event even more amazing than their birth. Out of three dozen sets of quintuplets born during the past five centuries, the Dionnes are the only ones who lived more than one hour. Legally these five are Canada's and King George VI's. But even more they are Medicine's, for they certainly would have died in the western Ontario farmhouse where they were born May 28, 1934, if Medicine had not rushed to their aid.

Medicine has controlled their every moment ever since Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe delivered them. Their birthday party this week will be a strictly hygienic affair. They will wear special party dresses with embroidery and ribbons, but their parents Oliva & Elzire Dionne, their five older brothers and sisters who are to eat most of the birthday cake, will be obliged to wear white cotton hospital gowns over their everyday clothes. If any one of them has a cold or even looks ill, he will lose his invitation to the party.

Unlike any other children, the Quintuplets had to have three birthday parties. For besides belonging to Canada, the Crown and Medicine, they also belong to a tremendous public whose agents pay good money to witness their doings. Three weeks ago for still cameras and four weeks ago for newsreels, this week's party was fully dress-rehearsed.

Current Data. Having reached the age of three, the Quintuplets have graduated from the class of biological sideshow freaks into a more normal human status. Like their tiny little bodies which Medicine helped to grow, their inner natures have now developed to the point where character and personality are distinguishable. Biologically they are not identical Quintuplets (from one subdivided ovum) but fraternal ones (from five separate eggs). The 750,000 visitors* who will look in at them during the 1937 tourist season, may value the following third birthday data on what they see:

Cecile 34 1/4 in. 31 Ib.

Annette 34 5/8 in. 31 1/2 Ib.

Yvonne 34 1/2 in. 30 1/4 Ib.

Emilie 34 in. 30 Ib.

Marie 34 in. 27 Ib.

Emilie and Marie each have 17 teeth, the others 16. They can now brush their own teeth, comb their own hair, dress themselves completely (except for shoe-tying), go to the toilet alone. They feed themselves and for the past month have been carrying their empty dishes from the table to the pantry.

Yvonne is the most lively and adventuresome. She regards herself as "mother"' of the rest. Marie is the quietest and most musical. When Marie "draws" she prefers to make straight, vertical lines. Cecile, the tallest, loves mirrors and red objects. Annette draws in sweeping circles. Yvonne paints spirals and is the most inventive. Lately their favorite game has been biting each other, and they know that the punishment for this is being sent to Coventry. Each has distinct color preferences (see front cover).

Every detail of this sort is carefully recorded, for the development of these five sisters in identical circumstances is as important to child psychologists as to pediatricians. In charge of them last week was Jacqueline Noel, a psychologist as well as a trained nurse. Assisting her were Nurses Claire Tremblay who is also a trained teacher, and Mollie O'Shaughnessy.

Toys are all educational, and are changed as the infants master their complexities. Last week they were in the nest-of-boxes and the hammer-&-peg stages. They match shapes and colors unerringly. Walls of their playroom are covered with animal pictures cut from magazines and books. The infants recognize the different creatures. A duck bothers them because his mouth is open, and nurses have taught them that this is bad form. They recognize their own pictures and can pick themselves readily out of groups.

They kneel for prayers and put their dolls in the same posture at the same time. They dance round dances and can carry a measure or two of tunes. But they cannot talk much. Their vocabulary consists of a few dozen words, most of which they cannot enunciate clearly. They say ''dodo'' for "dorme" (sleep), "bis" for "biscuit," "guau" for "grau" (gruel), "gogo" for "gateau" (cake). Lately, according to Dr. Dafoe, they have learned to string their words together into such simple sentences as "c'est beau," "c'est bon," "bonjour, docteur," or "un moment, petite bebe," the last when any quintuplet is too eager to leave the table. Any verbal backwardness Dr. Dafoe defends as not denoting mental deficiency but quite normal for babies who were born not only multiples but two months premature.

Crises. Marie was born with a tumor (hemangioma) on her right thigh. That disappeared after Johns Hopkins' great gynecologist Dr. Howard Kelly, who has a summer home only 70 miles from Callander, applied radium.

Marie, at birth the frailest, once suffered an infection of the middle ear. Dr. Dafoe lanced it. Other than that the only ailments they have had in their three years have been occasional colds and attacks of constipation. Dr. Dafoe has inoculated them against smallpox (on the right buttock) and diphtheria, their region's most prevalent diseases. For other protection he counts on strict laboratory regime. He will not let them mingle with other children until they are ten years old.*

The major crisis of their lives, of course, occurred that May morning in the lamplit, stove-heated farmhouse. Writing about it in retrospect, Dr. Dafoe admits that he could not believe they would live. After baptizing them himself, he left them lying "like rats" under a blanket at the foot of their mother's bed, while he went for a priest to give them a regular Roman Catholic baptism. Later that morning, as a matter of routine, he eye-dropped a little warm water into each shapeless mouth. When the tiny monstrosities continued to breathe, he added rum to the water, later corn syrup.

Next day he weighed the lot in a scoop scale usually used for potatoes. Gross weight of the five: 13 Ib. 6 oz. Their average height was only 9 in. (see cut, p. 54). Week later, they totaled only 10 Ib. 54 oz. But then they began to gain and Medicine mobilized. From Chicago and Toronto had come incubators and bottles of mother's milk. (Mrs. Dionne, who never had nursed her previous six children more than eleven days, was too toxemic to provide milk for this stupendous set. And there were no healthy wet nurses near Callander.) No country doctor ever received such a volume of expert advice as did Dr. Dafoe from foremost pediatricians all over the continent.

Asepsis was a prime necessity. Each Quintuplet had her own pile of mouth wipes. Each had absorbent cotton gauze jackets, rectal pads, special diapers to suit her pinched bottom. They were moved as little as possible. Once a day they received baths in olive oil. They did not get a soap-&-water bath until they were three months old, when their flesh had filled out and firmed up.

In their first week three of the five became constipated. Dr. Dafoe gave them saline enemas with a fine catheter and a hypodermic syringe, "and obtained a few yellowish black pellets." After that their appetites improved.

Premature infants cannot breathe well. They are apt to turn blue and die. Rum tided the Quintuplets over until Dr. Dafoe got cylinders of oxygen and carbon dioxide, which he used until late summer of 1934. When they were three months old the heat of their incubators was turned off. When they were four months they were christened: 1) Marie Reine Alma, 2) Emilie Marie Jeanne, 3) Cecile Marie Emilda, 4) Annette Lilianne Marie, 5) Yvonne Edouilda Marie.

On their first birthday their weights were from 15 Ib. to 17 1/2 Ib. On their second birthday the figures were 21 to 25 Ib.

The Stock from which the Quintuplets come may not be promising for keen intelligence but it is competent enough for its rustic environment, and is sturdy, earthy, prolific. The other Dionne children--Ernest (12). Rose (10). Therese (8), Daniel (6), Pauline (4) and Oliva Jr. (10 months)--have had no serious illnesses.

All eleven, except shock-haired Ernest, resemble their chunky mother in build. According to a popular generalization, they therefore should resemble Oliva Dionne in mind and spirit, and this they apparently do. Usually shy, occasionally assertive this unlettered man did precisely what might have been expected at the birth of the Quintuplets. He ran away to hide, crying: "A man like me should be kept in jail!" The forebears of both parents were of French-Canadian stock, who originally came from Quebec. About 40 years ago Oliver Dionne, level-headed grandfather of the Quintuplets, took up a farmstead at Callander. When Son Oliva arranged to marry Elzire Legros, daughter of another early Callander settler, he too got a farm. Oliva Dionne was 22 at his marriage, his wife 16. In her family were three sets of twins, in his two sets.

The Future of the Quintuplets is secure economically. Their guardians--Ontario's Premier Mitchell Hepburn,* Dr. Dafoe, who wears gracefully the fame and dinner clothes his backwoods accident has brought him, Judge J. A. Valin of North Bay and Oliva Dafoe--have more than $500,000 invested for them in Government bonds and another $200,000 in properties and equities. Last month the Ontario Parliament gave the children copyright on "The Quintuplets," "The Quints," "The Quins." Each should enjoy at least a million dollars if and when she reaches 18. By that time extraordinary psychological problems will have beset these extraordinary children. At present they are gay and sociable among themselves. They share their toys and comfort one another when in trouble. Although isolated from other children their society is pleasantly varied among themselves. But the very fact that they are varied characters must cause complications when they become selfconscious, form likes, dislikes and prejudices. For inevitably they will be forced upon each other's society as long as they all live as the World's Original Quintuplets. Problems of beaux and husbands will not be as hard for them as for Siamese Twins, but what if some of them want to settle down while the rest would go on tour? The world's amazement and curiosity about them will never cease. Will that make exhibitionists of them, or will it make them try to escape the world? Already the wise-acres of Callander predict that little Marie is going to be a nun.

*Estimated from last year's 500,000.

*Many pediatricians doubt the wisdom of such isolation. They believe that children gain immunity from many diseases by mingling with those who have had the diseases.

*Who replaced Ontario's Minister of Welfare David J. Croll after a political quarrel this spring.

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