54,000,000 to 1

The odds were 54,000,000 to 1, but it happened--and not once, but twice in a single week. The odds-off event: quintuplets. The first set, five boys, was born Sept. 7 in Maracaibo, Venezuela; the second, four girls and a boy, arrived seven days later in Aberdeen, South Dakota. At week's end mothers and quints were doing fine.

Not Even a Yelp. Last July, when X rays disclosed that she was carrying a fivesome, Venezuela's Ines Maria Cuervo, 34, fainted dead away. Once revived, the mother-to-be, the common-law wife of an oilfield worker, was tucked into bed at Maracaibo's University Hospital, put on a strict diet, and watched around the clock by doctors and nurses. During the delivery, she was conscious and calm. "At least let out a yelp," pleaded one nurse, "so we know you are having a baby." Her tiny boys arrived over a period of 50 minutes, two months premature and weighing from 2 lb. 3 oz. to 3 lb. 8 oz.

With the news, Venezuela exploded with joy. Scores of letters, telegrams and donations poured into the hospital. President Romulo Betancourt phoned twice in a day; the hospital picked up the medical tab and the government set up a fund to cover the boys' education. The family can well use it. Ines Maria and the babies' father, Efren Lubin Prieto, 38, live in a 20-ft.-sq. mud hut in a dismal slum on the shore of Lake Maracaibo. Out of Efren Lubin's earnings of $10 a day, he supports 18 people, including ten children from his previous families and four from Ines Maria's first marriage. No one seemed to mind that the parents were unwed; after all, more Venezuelan children are born out of wedlock than in. But just the same, 15 hours after the quints arrived, mother and father were formally married.

Breech Deliveries. In Aberdeen, the excitement at St. Luke's Hospital was almost as great as in Venezuela, when Mrs. Andrew Fischer delivered her four girls and a boy. The 30-year-old wife of a $76-a-week grocery shipping clerk, Mrs. Fischer had learned from an X ray a scant three days in advance that quints were on the way. Then when her time came, there were complications. Four of the five infants were breech deliveries; the other emerged head first. Also six-to eight-weeks premature, Mrs. Fischer's brood arrived in 90 minutes, weighed an estimated 2 lb. 6 oz. to 4 lb.

Back home, the proud papa had moved the rest of his family--four girls and a boy, aged 3 1/2 to 7--to a farm outside the city, where he keeps a few cows to cut down his milk bill. "I don't make the most money in the world," he says, "and it does present some problems."

As all ten children struggled for life in incubators, doctors knew they had a fight ahead. Some 50 sets of quints have been recorded in modern medical history, and of those, only two sets survived infancy: the Dionne sisters of Canada, born in 1934, and the Diligenti quints of Argentina, born in 1943. All five Diligentis are still alive, but one of the Dionnes, Emily, died in 1954. Like all other "preemies," the Fischer and Prieto quints could be prone to respiratory troubles, nutritional difficulties and general infection. The odds may be against both sets, but last week odds did not seem to mean much.

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