We now come to the changes that take place in the genital parts of the female after intercourse, and to the conception itself. In the month of September, then, when the female deer first comes in season, her cornua uteri, uterus, or place of conception, grows somewhat more fleshy and thick, softer also, and more tender. In the interior of either cornu, at that part, namely, which looks drawn together by a band, and is turned towards the spine, we observe, protruding in regular succession, five caruncles, soft warts, or papillæ. The first of these is larger than any of the others, and each in succession is smaller than the one before it, just as the cornua themselves become smaller and smaller towards their termination. Some of the caruncles grow to the thickness of the largest finger, and look like proud flesh; some are white, others of a deeper red.
From the 26th to the 28th of September, and also subsequently, in the month of October, the uterus becomes thicker, and the carunculæ mentioned come to resemble the nipples of the woman’s breast: you might fancy them ready to pour out milk. Having removed their apex that I might examine their internal structure, I found them made up of innumerable white points compacted together, like so many bristles erect, and connected by means of a certain mucous viscidity; compressed between the fore finger and thumb, from the base upwards, a minute drop of blood oozed out from each point, a fact which led me, after farther investigation, to conclude that they were entirely made up of the capillary branches of arteries.
During the season of intercourse, therefore, the uterine vessels, particularly the arteries, are observed to be more numerous and of larger size; although the parts called the female testes, as I have said above, are neither larger nor more highly gorged with blood than before, and do not appear to be altered in any way from their former state.
The inner aspect of the uterus or cornua uteri, where it is puckered into cells, is as smooth and soft as the ventricles of the brain, or the glans penis within the prepuce. Nothing, however, can be discovered there—neither the semen of the male, nor aught else having reference to the conception—during the whole of the months of September and October, although I have instituted repeated dissections with a view of examining the conception at this period. The males have been doing their duty all the while; nevertheless, reiterated dissection shows nothing. This is the conclusion to which I have come, after many years of observation. I have only occasionally found the five caruncles so close together that they formed a kind of continuous protuberance into the interior of the uterus. But when, after repeated inspections, I still found nothing more in the uterus, I began to doubt, and to ask myself whether the semen of the male could by any possibility make its way—by attraction or injection—to the seat of the conception? And repeated examination led me to the conclusion that none of the semen whatsoever reached this seat.
EXERCISE THE SIXTY-EIGHTH.
Of what takes place in the month of October.
Repeated dissections performed in the course of the month of October, both before the rutting season was over and after it had passed, never enabled me to discover any blood or semen, or a trace of anything else, either in the body of the uterus or in its cornua. The uterus was only a little larger, and somewhat thicker; and the caruncles were more tumid and florid, and, when strongly pressed with the finger, discharged small drops of blood, much in the manner in which a little watery milk can be squeezed from the nipples of a woman in the fourth month of her pregnancy. In one or two does, indeed, I found a green and ichorous matter, like an abscess, filling the cavity of the uterus, which was preternaturally extenuated; in other respects these animals were healthy, and in as good condition as others which I examined at the same time.
Towards the end of October and beginning of November, the rutting season being now ended, and the females separating themselves from the males, the uterus begins (in some sooner, in others later) to shrink in size, and the walls of its internal cavity, inflated in appearance, to bulge out; for where the cells existed formerly there are now certain globular masses projecting internally, which nearly fill the whole cavity, by which the sides are brought into mutual contact, and almost agglutinated, as it seems, so that there is no interval between them. Even as we have seen the lips of boys who, in robbing a hive, had been stung in the mouth, swollen and enlarged, so that the oral aperture was much contracted, even so does the internal surface of the uterus in the doe enlarge, and become filled with a soft and pulpy substance, like the matter of the brain, that fills its cavity and involves the caruncles, which, though not larger than before, look whiter, and as if they had been steeped in hot water, much as the nurse’s nipple appears immediately after the infant has quitted it. And now I have not found it possible by any compression to force blood out of the caruncles as before.
Nothing can be softer, smoother, more delicate, than the inner aspect of the uterus thus raised into tubers. It rivals the ventricles of the brain in softness, so that without the information of the eye we should scarcely perceive by the finger that we were touching anything. When the abdomen is laid open immediately after the death of the animal, I have frequently seen the uterus affected with a wavy and creeping motion, such as is perceived in the lower part of a slug or snail whilst it is moving, as if the uterus were an animal within an animal, and possessed a proper and independent motion. I have frequently observed a movement of the same kind as that just described in the intestines, whilst engaged in vivisections; and indeed such a motion can both be seen and felt in the bodies of dogs and rabbits whilst they are alive and uninjured. I have also observed a corresponding motion in the testes and scrotum of men; and I have even known women upon whom, in their eagerness for offspring, such palpitations have imposed. But whether the uterus in hysterical females, by ascending, descending, and twisting, experiences any such motion or not, I cannot take upon me to declare; and whether the brain, in its actions and conceptions, moves in anything of a similar manner or not, though a point difficult of investigation, I am inclined to look upon as one by no means unworthy of being attempted.
Shortly afterwards, the tubercular elevations of the inner surface of the uterus that have been mentioned begin to shrink; it is as if, losing a quantity of moisture, they became less plump. In some instances; indeed, though rarely, I have observed something like purulent matter adhering to them, such as is usually seen on the surface of wounds and ulcers when they are digested, as it is said, they pour out smooth and homogeneous pus. When I first saw this matter, I doubted whether it was the semen of the male or not, or a substance concocted from its purer portion. But as it was only in exceedingly rare instances that I met with such matter, and as twenty days had then passed since the doe had had any intercourse with the buck, and farther, as the matter was not viscid and tenacious, or spumous, such as the seminal fluid presents itself to us, but rather friable, purulent looking, and inclining to yellow, I came to the conclusion that it was the effect of accident, a sweat or exudation in consequence of violent exercise previous to death; just as in a catarrh the thinner defluxion of the nose is by and by changed into a thicker mucus.