The periodical maturation and extrusion of ova, independently of coitus, in mammalia and man, proved to be the primary condition to their propagation / Translated from the German by Henry Smith.

  • Theodor Ludwig Wilhelm von Bischoff
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The periodical maturation and extrusion of ova, independently of coitus, in mammalia and man, proved to be the primary condition to their propagation / Translated from the German by Henry Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    quantity of limpid serum. Four corpora lutea were well developed. In two of these, the mass of granulations forming them grew out a consider¬ able distance from the previous opening in the follicle, in a manner which I have seldom seen in the dog. The opening had probably closed at an earlier period in the other two, before the mass of the corpus luteum had arrived at so considerable a growth, and they were therefore now imbedded in the stroma of the ovary. After I had carefully dissected the fallopian tube, I extended it out upon a wax tablet, and opened it with a pair of fine scissors : I found the four extruded ova already far advanced in its cavity; they were close together at a distance of 3 P. in. =8 centim. from the ostium abdominale. The tube itself was 5 P. in. = 13 centim. in length. Three of these ova had the usual normal round appearance ; the fourth, on the contrary, had an anomalous form, such as I had often previously seen in the dog, being elliptical, or almost like the figure of a guitar. All still had their discs around the zona, yet it was clear that these cells no longer retained their full, normal appearance, but had already commenced to undergo liquefac¬ tion. The ova had somewhat increased in size, for they measured with the discus 0,0090 — 0,0097 P. in. in diameter. Such was not the case with the yolk, for that seemed rather to be somewhat condensed, and on that account it no longer completely filled out the zona in all the ova. It had its usual form, and no trace of a division was developed in it. In the interspace between the yolk and the zona in one ovum, that large vesicle or granule (rio P» in. =6^ millim.) which, as it seems, is always ob¬ servable in ova at the commencement of the tube, presented itself: I have on a former occasion pronounced it to be the nucleus of the germinal vesicle. I saw nothing of the sort in the other three ova. I no longer found any trace of the germinal vesicle itself in any of the ova. I do not believe it to be possible to prove the entire process of the maturation and exit of the ova during ‘‘ the heat,” and without coition, more completely than it is done by this twofold observation instituted in one and the same animal. On January 4, 1844, I obtained the genital organs of a sow, which had manifested the strongest signs of “ the heat” during 48 hours, but had not been admitted to any male. The Graafian vesicles, however, were still closed. A considerable number of these, indeed, were much developed in both ovaries, and were very conspicuous from the rest, in consequence of their greater vascularity; but none of them had burst, and I fortliAvith ob¬ tained the ovum from one which I had removed from the ovary and opened upon a glass. It was, as usual, surrounded by the cells of its discus, which, moreover, were still round, and not extended into fibres. It measured in the diameter of its zona 0,0060 P. in. The yolk, which consisted for the most part of rather large fat globules, did not completely
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