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(p. 302) The McIntosh apple was developed in Ontario, where the climate is similar to New England and New York's Hudson and Champlain valleys (where the apple has flourished).
(p. 320) In Practical Anatomy of the Rabbit, Bensley describes the ovary and oviducts of the rabbit and compares his findings to the same equipment in other animals.
(pp. 348-49) The Exeter limerick is dated 1927-41; the town of Exeter appears in many limericks because it rhymes with "sex at her"--as in, "It was then that Jones pointed his sex at her!" (A famous last line.) I always heard a lot of Exeter limericks because I was born and grew up in Exeter, New Hampshire.
The Brent limerick is dated 1941. It is a classic "organ limerick," so called because there is a special category of limericks devoted to the peculiarities of the male and female organs. As in,
There was a young fellow named Cribbs
Whose cock was so big it had ribs.
(1944-51)
And in the famous 1938 limerick that was voted Best Limerick by one of the graduating classes of Princeton:
There once was a Queen of Bulgaria
Whose bush had grown hairier and hairier,
Till a Prince from Peru
Who came up for a screw
Had to hunt for her cunt with a terrier.
The Toronto limerick is circa 1941.
(p. 367) The Bombay limerick is dated 1879--an old one.
(p. 382) Dr. Larch would have been surprised to learn that his condemning statistics of unwanted children were still accurate in 1965. Dr. Charles F. Westoff of Princeton's Office of Population Research, and the co-director of the 1965 National Fertility Study, concluded that 750,000 to a million children--born to married couples between 1960 and 1965--were unwanted. This estimate is low. Even in a poll, many parents are unwilling to admit that any child of theirs was unwanted. Furthermore, unwed or abandoned mothers were not included in the survey; their opinions regarding how many of their children were unwanted were never counted. For more information on this subject, see James Trager's The Bellybook (1972).
Ben Franklin was the fifteenth of seventeen children; his faith in rapid population growth was declared in his Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind (1755).
(pp. 400-401) My source for this delivery is Chapter XV, "Conduct of Normal Labor," Williams Obstetrics, Henricus J. Stander--circa 1936. I base the described procedure on such a dated source--it is performed in my story in 1943--because I wish to emphasize that Homer's procedure, which has been learned from Dr. Larch, is somewhat old-fashioned but nonetheless correct.
(p. 408) "I was born with a caul, which was advertised for sale, in the newspapers, at the low price of fifteen guineas." From David Copperfield, Chapter 1 ("I Am Born"). The caul is the membrane that is usually ruptured and expelled at the onset of bearing-down pains but that in rare cases does not rupture--the child coming into the world surrounded by membrane. In the time of Dickens, this protective shroud was taken as a sign that the child would be lucky in life--and, more specifically, never be drowned. In the story of David Copperfield, this is an early indication that our hero will find his way and not meet with the form of poor Steerforth's undoing (Steerforth drowns).
Homer Wells, very familiar with David Copperfield, is interpreting the drop of sweat that prematurely baptizes his birthing child as having similar protective powers. Homer's child will be lucky in life; Angel will not drown.
(p. 420) The first edition of Greenhill's Office Gynecology was publis
hed in 1939; the eighth edition of Diseases of Women (Roquist, Clayton and Lewis) was published in 1949.
The medical journals that Larch would always have had on hand--in addition to The New England Journal of Medicine--are The Journal of the American Medical Association (in doctors' shorthand this is always called JAMA), The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (it has the most vivid illustrations), The Lancet (a British journal), and Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics (in doctors' shorthand this is always called S, G and O; in 194_, lots of surgeons did gynecology, too).
P.S.
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THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, which won the National Book Award in 1980, was John Irving's fourth novel and his first international bestseller; it also became a George Roy Hill film. Tony Richardson wrote and directed the adaptation for the screen of The Hotel New Hampshire (1984). Irving's novels are now translated into thirty-five languages, and he has had nine international bestsellers. Worldwide, the Irving novel most often called "an American classic" is A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989), the portrayal of an enduring friendship at that time when the Vietnam War had its most divisive effect on the United States. In 1992, John Irving was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. (He competed as a wrestler for twenty years, until he was thirty-four, and coached the sport until he was forty-seven.) In 2000, Irving won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules--a Lasse Hallstrom film that earned seven Academy Award nominations. Tod Williams wrote and directed The Door in the Floor--the 2004 film adapted from Mr. Irving's ninth novel, A Widow for One Year. In One Person (2012) is John Irving's thirteenth novel.
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