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

REMARKS.

Calculous, steatomatous, and solid placentas are not of unfrequent occurrence in practice. I have seen several such cases. Sir Wm. Blizard presented to the Royal College of Surgeons a very instructive specimen of a human Ovum having a sarcomatous and calculous placenta, which had been expelled at three months and a half, by a patient who had miscarried three times within the three previous months.

There is also in the same college a magnificent specimen of a solid Ovum, of the size of a hen’s egg and shape. A small portion of the shell of this Ovum having been cut off, the embryo is seen, of the size of a common fly, within the cavity, which may be just large enough to admit the top of a man’s thumb. The ordinary involucra are so compact, and so firmly adhesive to one another, that they cannot be separately distinguished. The parietes thus formed are at least one fourth of an inch in thickness. On the right of the inside of the cavity there is seen a large swelling, which projects within the said cavity, and is probably the receptacle of another embryo, or a deposition of blood between what ought to be the translucid membranes or involucra.

Sometimes the fœtus alone has been found to have become an in-formed, hardened, or steatomatous mass. This is the case with a preparation, a striking one, in the Museum of St. George’s Hospital, midwifery division, marked F. 94. The fœtus, two inches long and perhaps one inch in diameter, is converted into a solid mass, retaining barely the outline of some parts of its form, with the exception of the vertex of the head, which is clearly defined. The mass appears to be steatomatous, and is suspended at a point considerably below the centre, by a regular umbilical cord pending from a large placenta, having the transparent and other involucra, which are laid open for inspection. A minute dissection of these various parts could not fail to throw considerable light on many important points connected with the diseases of the human Ovum, the fœtus, and its structure. At present the preparation is only imperfectly instructive.