Graphic illustrations of abortion and the diseases of menstruation / Consisting of Twelve Plates from Drawings Engraved on Stone, and Coloured by Mr. J. Perry, and Two Copper-plates from the Philosophical Transactions, Coloured by the Same Artist. the Whole Representing Forty-five Specimens of Aborted Ova and Adventitious Productions of the Uterus, With Preliminary Observations, Explanations of the Figures and Remarks, Anatomical and Physiological.

by A. B. Granville

Fig. 1. Ovum embryoferum in receptaculo interstitiale.

The uterus is enlarged in its general volume and appendages to the size which it more commonly acquires at the second month of pregnancy. The section of its coats shews their increased thickness, and the many hundred orifices of its enlarged blood-vessels. Within the cavity of the womb there was no vestige of any ovum, but in its stead a spongious and woolly membrane was found.

On the upper and outer surface or basis of the uterus, a swelling of a red colour was observed, nearer to the left than to the right side. It was richly streaked with blood-vessels, which gave it the appearance of inflammation. Two lacerations had taken place in the thinnest part of the coats of this eminence or tumour. These lacerations led to a cavity or sac, or cyst, which contained an embryo of from eleven to twelve weeks’ growth: it was regularly enveloped within the two transparent membranes, on the external of which the rudiments of a placenta were found. This embryoferous cyst was separated from the real cavity of the womb; there being no communication whatever between them.

The left Fallopian tube was impervious throughout its whole length.

On opening the body of the patient, who had before borne three children, and had also miscarried twice, and died when she supposed herself two months gone with child, the cavity of the abdomen was found filled with blood.

This case is related by Hendrick in the “archives”, by Horn, Sept. and Oct. 1817; transmitted and vouched to Dr. Breschet of Paris by Professor Carus of Dresden, who sent the drawing, from a lithographic copy of which the present plate is taken.