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

In this specimen of an early miscarriage, the Ovulum exhibits the filiform vessels as in No. 1; but one half of its circumference is denuded of them, and the diaphanous involucra are distinctly visible in that part. They are represented flaccid owing to the escape of a part of the liquor amnii. In size the embryo (which required to be viewed in a very strong light) resembled that of No. 6.

Fig. 3. Ovulum lanuginosum.

(Three weeks after menstruation.)

A mossy Ovulum, shewing the inner or secreting membrane, within which I could not discover any embryo at the time of the miscarriage occurring. On searching among the coagula consequent on a very extensive hemorrhage, the Ovulum was found flat, and appeared like a confused mass. The liquor amnii had escaped, and probably the embryo along with it. The artist has most skilfully delineated the peculiar turns of the involucra where they have been divided so as to display those marked inflexions which are still more distinctly seen in No. 4.

Fig. 4. Ovulum semi-lanuginosum.

(Four weeks after menstruation.)

I look upon this as one of the most perfect specimens of mono-embryoferous Ovula at four weeks, I have seen; exhibiting as it does, not only the mossy or nutritive, but also the inner, amnionic, or secreting involucrum, with its peculiar inflected turn, forming a sacculum within which is lodged the embryo. The nutritive involucrum is separated from the middle membrane by the allantoid cavity, and the middle membrane itself stands aloof from the amnion, owing to the vesicula umbilicalis. The existence of these various elementary parts of the human Ovum in the present specimen, shews its early development, and serves to fix its age, which I consider to be of about three weeks and a half.

As gestation advances, some of those elements are obliterated, and others confounded together.

REMARKS.

I imagine that these Ovula pass away from the womb almost immediately after they have entered it, owing to a tardy or deficient formation of that peculiar lining which the uterine cavity begins to weave for itself from the first moment of a successful copulation, and to some part of which the Ovula are destined to adhere.