Essays on the female economy / by John Power.

  • Power, John
Date:
1821
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays on the female economy / by John Power. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    subjected to confinement, to evidence appearances of a similar periodical discharge.* There is reason to think, that the connexion of the ovum to the uterus, and the establishment of the placentft, is, in these instances, effected through the o medium of a deciduous membrane, or in a manner analogous with the same in the human female. Various views have been taken of the causes of so extraordinary a phenomenon, which it is proposed only briefly to consider, since none of them appear to afford an approach to that satisfactory explanation, which physiological truth demands. The causes of menstruation have been arranged under two heads ; the efficient and final causes. By the efficient cause is implied that series of bodily or physical actions which gives rise to the discharge. The final cause comprehends its use, or the purpose which it serves in the female economy. In both respects, an infinity of conjectures, the offsprings of hypothesis, have hitherto supplied the place of rati- onal demonstration; and the real explanation has appeared, like the gordian knot, to admit rather of forcible separation, than a true and systematic unra- velment. In the present day of scientific enquiry, however, the method of reasoning from established * See Buffon on the Monkey Tribe passim, and the works of John Hunter. + “ The monkey differs from other animals, in having no per- manent papillae; but the maternal part of the placenta is deciduous, like that of women.”—Burns, p. 146
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