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Nature, as if to atone for denying to some the delights of maternity, has been occasionally doubly bountiful to others. The annexed drawing exhibits a section of a double uterus. Cases are on record, where both have been impregnated.
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In the instance of a deceased married female, that fell under my observation, the uterus or womb presented the following appearances: The usual cavity was discoverable, but it was filled with a cheesy-like substance, and also there were some ulcered-looking caverns filled with the same material. This female, while living, endured continued pains in the uterine region, was insensible to marital physical enjoyments, sterile, although a wife several years, and the constant sufferer from a vaginal discharge. Her death was consequent upon a severe cold that ended in consumption.
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Leucorrhœa is often attended with barrenness; at all events, it is very debilitating, and thus impedes conception. A notion once prevailed, that women who did not menstruate could not conceive; it has since been disproved, except in those instances where menstruation never occurred: a single monthly discharge indicates an aptitude for conception. It is observed that barren women have very small breasts. Women who are very fat are often barren, for their corpulence either exists as a mark of weakness of the system, or it depends upon a want of activity in the ovaria: thus spayed or castrated animals generally become fat. The same remarks apply to the male kind, who are outrageously corpulent. There are many other peculiarities in matrimonial life, fertile subjects for speculation; such as, for instance, the lapse of time that often occurs after marriage before conception takes place, and the space between each act of gestation; the solution of which may be, that these occurrences are modified by certain aptitudes, dispositions, state of health, &c.; the same may explain why persons have lived together for years in unfruitful matrimony, and who yet, after being divorced, and marrying others, have both had children.
It is not always that the most healthy women are more favorable to conception than the spare and feeble. High feeding and starvation are alike occasionally inimical to breeding. The regularity of the “courses” appears principally essential to secure impregnation; and the intercourse is generally held likely to be the more fruitful that takes place early after that customary relief.