Compendious system of midwifery : chiefly designed to facilitate the inquiries.

  • William Potts Dewees
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Compendious system of midwifery : chiefly designed to facilitate the inquiries. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Lamar Soutter Library, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

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    vascular, and constant observation proves it deciduous ; thei fore it must be a temporary product, and certainly subservient to the uses of the embryo. 134. It is spread over the whole of the internal surface of the body and fundus of the uterus, but does not dip into the neck—forming as it were a bag within the uterus ; sometimes, we are told* it does not stretch across the aperture formed hy jhe neck ; and sometimes,! it is said not to be continued over the mouths of the fallopian tubes. 135. The uses of this new product cannot be mistaken; it certainly serves as the bond of union between the ovum and the uterus ; and has, moreover, an indirect agency in the circula- tion between the mother and child. 136. It is described by Dr. Hunter, Dr. Hamilton, Mr. Bums, and others, as a double membrane ; but as Mr. Bums is the latest of these authors ; as he is extensively engaged in mid- wifery ; and has, as he declares, had several opportunities of examiningthe uterus within a month after conception; and, above all, as he is the present authority for almost every thing rela- tive to this subject, we shall give his account of the mode in which the ovum places itself behind the decidua that it may descend into the cavity of the uterus. He says, when the embryo passes down through the tube, it is stopped, when it reaches the uterus, by the inner layer (of the decidua) which goes across the aperture of the tube, and thus would be pre- vented from falling into the cavity of the uterus, even were it quite loose and unattached. By the growth of the embryo, and the enlargement of the membranes, this membrane is distended, and made to encroach upon the cavity of the uterus, or, more correctly speaking, it grows with the ovum. This distension or growth gradually increases, until at last the whole of the ca- vity of the uterus is filled up, and the protruded portion of the inner l:\ver of the decidua comes in contact with that portion of Itself which rcm.iins attached to the out;r layer. We find then, * Burns, p. 193. f Sir E. Home, Phil. Trans. [9]