: In medieval times, how were twins detected? I was wondering how women (in the old times) were able to find if they were expecting twins. Was it possible a woman give birth to twins without knowing it?

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Without ultrasound you’d discover by palpation - feeling the abdomen.

Each baby has two poles - the head and the bottom. If you can feel three clearly separate poles there must be at least two babies in there.

It’s difficult to feel 5 poles which would be needed to confirm triplets.

Alternatively, sometimes you can clearly identify poles which are heads - in which case the number of heads you can feel puts a lower bound on the number of babies.

This isn’t a particularly reliable approach - it’s easy to underestimate the number of babies. So multiple babies are often still a surprise if there is no access to imaging.