Dr. Conquest's outlines of midwifery : intended as a text-book for students, and a book of reference for junior practitioners.

  • Conquest, Dr.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. Conquest's outlines of midwifery : intended as a text-book for students, and a book of reference for junior practitioners. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    much more likely to follow laboiu's of this sort than ordinary cases. — J. M. W.] SUPERFCETATION* Is a process involved in considerable obscurity, but fortunately one of no practical importance. The term superfcetation implies that a second im- pregnation may take place whilst the uterus already contains a living child in utero; but this cannot be, if the theory of conception, which assumes the trans- mission of the male semen through the uterus and Fallopian tubes, be correct; because, the os uteri being blocked up by coagulable lymph, and the en- trance to the Fallopian tubes being obstructed by the decidua soon after conception, such an occurrence is rendered impossible. Those cases in which a plurality of children have existed, and in which superfcetation is supposed to have occurred, are either referable — to the prema- ture death of one fcetus, which has remained in utero with the living child to the full period of utero-ges- tation; or, to the descent of the ova into the uterus, from the ovarium not observing the same order of • time, one being more slowly evolved than the other, ; although both might have been fecundated by the * Vide Transactions of the College of Physicians, vol. iv ■ Me- dico-chirurgical Transactions, vol. Lx.; and PJiilosopliical Trims- actions, vol. lx.