The focus of enormous public attention, the Dionne quintuplets were five girls born during one delivery to Elzire and Oliva Dionne, a farm couple with six other children in Corbell, Ontario, 28 May 1934. The multiple birth was so rare that Morris Fishbein of the American Medical Association reported that only thirty cases had been reported in the five hundred previous years; in none of those thirty, according to Fishbein, did all five children live longer than fifty minutes. The public was more than intrigued. Progress of the quints was eagerly reported by the press; their eating habits, spirits, and illnesses were scrutinized by the public;gifts of money, food, clothing, and toys poured in to the Dionnes. The government of Canada, viewing them as national treasures, made them wards of the state and built a new home and provided subsidies for them. The king...