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. Mola Mytilus.

This is a highly interesting case of Mola, to which I have given the designating appellative of Mytilus from its suggesting, when laid open longitudinally, the idea of that shell (muscle).

It is an oblong mass, broader at one end than at the other, as all these productions of the uterine cavity are found to be. In its external appearance it is fleshy, pulpy, of variegated tints even at the very moment of its expulsion, irregularly smooth, and free from any pellicle or membranaceous covering.

Internally it exhibits an oblong cavity, corresponding in figure, relative breadths, and length to the containing mass, which looks like a thick coagulum at the sectional edges. This cavity, however, is not a mere hollow in the general mass, but looks like an oblong membranous pouch imbedded in that mass. Its interior is lined by an exquisitely delicate and almost fumiform pellicle—lactescent or opalescent. The pointed extremity of this cavity loses itself in the brilliantly red mass of the tapering end of the mole, at neither of whose extremities is there the least semblance of any aperture.

When I laid open this curious mole, its cavity contained a small quantity of clear fluid.