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

Dr. Clarke, in his account of this case, says, that the substance in the cervix was gelatinous in the recent state, and that within the uterine cavity it is the decidua which we observe. The Doctor afterwards remarks that such decidua is always formed in the cavity in question, whether the fœtus gets into it or not; but his own description of another and even more important case of tubic gestation, which occurred at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and was carefully examined by Mr. Abernethy, gainsays the assertion; for it is there stated, “that in the cavity of the uterus nothing remarkable was found”; and in my own case of Ovarian gestation, “no production whatever” was found within the cavity of the enlarged uterus.

From the state of the right Ovarium and the appearances and situation of the corpus luteum, we gather two probable facts. First, that the actual seat of the Ovulum is the place occupied afterwards by the corpus luteum, which fills the vesicula Graafiana considerably enlarged subsequently to fecundation. The fecundated Ovulum escapes from the Ovarium by bursting through the coats of the said vesicula Graafiana, which is generally found close to the periphery of the Ovarium. Secondly, that the process by which the breach made in the structure of the vesicle (or egg-nest) by the escape of the Ovulum is restored, is cicatrization, and that much time is not required for such a restoration.

Does not the first of these probable facts explain the acute pain which many women feel in the course of the first week subsequent to successful coition,—which some experience even for some time after,—and which is by all assigned to that part, of one or the other of the iliac regions, which corresponds to the situation of the Ovarium? Indeed, I have known Ovaritis of a very serious nature to follow shortly after impregnation.

Plate 10
Joseph Perry del et Lithog.             Printed by C. Hullmandel.
D^r. Granville on Abortion
and the Diseases of Menstruation

PLATE X.
THIRD SPECIMEN OF ABERRANT FŒTAL GESTATION.
(EARLY PERIOD).

Fig. 1. Ovum embryoferum in receptaculo interstitiale.

The uterus is enlarged in its general volume and appendages to the size which it more commonly acquires at the second month of pregnancy. The section of its coats shews their increased thickness, and the many hundred orifices of its enlarged blood-vessels. Within the cavity of the womb there was no vestige of any ovum, but in its stead a spongious and woolly membrane was found.

On the upper and outer surface or basis of the uterus, a swelling of a red colour was observed, nearer to the left than to the right side. It was richly streaked with blood-vessels, which gave it the appearance of inflammation. Two lacerations had taken place in the thinnest part of the coats of this eminence or tumour. These lacerations led to a cavity or sac, or cyst, which contained an embryo of from eleven to twelve weeks’ growth: it was regularly enveloped within the two transparent membranes, on the external of which the rudiments of a placenta were found. This embryoferous cyst was separated from the real cavity of the womb; there being no communication whatever between them.

The left Fallopian tube was impervious throughout its whole length.