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. 5.

The rudiments of the embryo in this specimen are more than usually diminutive, compared to the mass which constituted the entire Ovum before it was flattened and pinned to a piece of blue pasteboard placed in spirits within a glass jar. This preparation, now in the museum of St. George’s Hospital, exhibits the transparent involucra and the placental envelope with the intermediate membranes, imperfectly developed, of an Ovum which I should judge to have been fecundated about three weeks. At this period of conception the embryo is generally straight, consisting of that part which is to be the trunk, terminated, as in this case, by a round swelling, which is the head. Here the embryo is in reality straight, and has the appearance of a worm. It is attached to the inside of the secreting membrane by its abdominal surface without any visible cord. As illustrative, and that in a very distinct manner, of this early stage of pregnancy, Fig. 5 is a valuable specimen.