These two morbid Ova are represented of their natural size, and were carefully drawn and coloured as soon after their expulsion as could be accomplished. I believe they are unique of their kind. At least I have not seen any such in the various collections I have visited: neither do I think that they have been mentioned, still less delineated, by any writer.
It is manifest, that under the various unpropitious circumstances in which these Ova were placed, growth must have been materially retarded and ultimately impeded; while life must have ceased sometime before the Ova were expelled.
Judging from their size and the length of time during which they lodged in the uterine cavity, these Ova must have acted the part of parasitic animals upon that organ.
Plate 3
Joseph Perry del et Lithog. Printed by C. Hullmandel.
Dr. Granville on Abortion
and the Diseases of Menstruation
PLATE III.
SPECIMENS OF MISCARRIAGE BETWEEN THE SECOND AND THIRD MONTH.
Fig. 13. Ovum semi-coriaceum.
(Nine weeks after menstruation?)
The external covering has been laid open. It is thick and fleshy. A second or inner covering is observed equally dense in texture and opaque; and a third involucrum, lying over the secreting membranes, (which are seen through a wide slit, bearing at their upper portion the filiform vessels,) is not only thick, like the second involucrum, but is actually seen passing from the transparent into the dense and opaque texture. The artist has portrayed this circumstance most accurately in his engraving. The placental cotyledons are at the posterior part of the figure, mossy, in groups, and some of them covered with their membrana propria. The embryo of this, and of Ovum 15, are not visible.
There can be little doubt but that intro-uterine inflammation, extended to the involucra of the Ovum, has produced, first, its morbid change of structure, and lastly, its early expulsion from the womb.