The paper, accompanied by the drawings from which the Plates, (so kindly lent me for my present purpose by the Council of the Royal Society) were engraved, was transmitted by me to that scientific body in June 1819; and was honoured with a place among the Philosophical Transactions for 1820.
The drawings were made for the Royal Society, soon after the death of the patient, by Mr. Bauer, under my inspection, and coloured by him from the preparation, which has remained ever since in my possession, and may be considered as perfectly unique. It is sufficient to mention that gentleman’s name to vouch for the accuracy of every part of this interesting representation. A case so perfect, so indubitable, and so far advanced, of a fecundated Ovarian Ovum had never been recorded before, and completely gainsays the hasty, and I must admit, unwarrantable dictum of a venerable naturalist and philosopher whom I highly esteem, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who, in a report made to the Institute of France on the subject of Breschet’s memoir, respecting the interstitial extra-uterine gestation already mentioned, ventured to make the following assertions, six years after the publication of my undisputed case of purely ovarian fœtiferous Ovum in the Philosophical Transactions.
“Il n’y a jamais de grossesse Ovarique, dans ce sens que le fœtus puisse se developer dans l’interieur de l’Ovaire; on connaît des cas de fœtus arrivé sur l’Ovaire; mais très certainement l’ovule en était sorti pour n’y rentrer, ni comme œuf, ni comme embryon.”
Plate 11
Joseph Perry del et Lithog. Printed by C. Hullmandel.
Dr. Granville on Abortion
and the Diseases of Menstruation
PLATE XI.
A. DYSMENORRHOIC ORGANIZATIONS.
Fig. 1. Membrana pseudo-textilis intro-uterina bi-tubulata.
A pulpy tissue of a very loose texture, scarcely deserving of the name of membrane,—of a bright red colour when thrown off by the womb, but, soon after maceration in water, assuming a yellowish tint, and appearing like a gelatinous, thickish, and translucid web, the component molecules of which possess but slightly the power of cohesion, being easily lacerated. Examined with a powerful lens, it looks like a congeries of globules of gelatine, arranged together into a flat, but not even surface. It possesses flexibility, but scarcely any elasticity.
This tissue lines the womb; and the two superior tubes drawn up vertically in the preparation are the prolongations of that lining into the fallopian tubes.
It was thrown off in the case of a patient suffering habitually from dysmenorrhœa, after acute pain; and on the third day of a very scanty menstruation. The patient was not a married lady, and under twenty-five years of age. The same production had been observed on more than one occasion before by the attendant, but not especially noticed until after I began to visit the patient.