The Dublin practice of midwifery / By Henry Maunsell.

  • Henry Maunsell
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Dublin practice of midwifery / By Henry Maunsell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    under the stimulus of conception. * It is soon supplied with vessels admitting of being injected from the uterine arteries, and then assumes the form of a dense and thick, but friable membrane. The decidua is not formed in the cervix uteri, but stretches across its upper part, so as to form a shut sac in the body and fundus. It also closes up the openings of the Fallopian tubes on each side.f When the ovum passes down, it must, to get into the womb, remove from the orifice of the tube the layer which closes it, andin doing so {jprohably) forms for itself a little bag, having a neck only equal in diameter to the perforation of the tube. From the plastic nature of the decidua, we can easily believe that this bag may increase in a degree correspond- ing to the growth of the ovum, whilst its neck remains of its original size (that of the tube); and it is not detached from any part of the uterine surface, as some have supposed. The bag thus formed around the ovum, by the prolongation and growth of that portion of the membrane which covered the opening of the tube, is termed the decidua rejlexa, in contradistinction to the portion * In texture and mode of formation it appears to resemble much the false membrane thrown out in certain inflamma- tions, as croup, &c. f Dr. Lee supposes that the decidua is perforated oppo- site each tube; but it is scarcely likely that an aperture so minute as that of the tube would be preserved in a mem- brane of the kind. His view also offers a great difficulty in the explanation of the formation of the decidua rcflexa,—a subject already obscure enough. Vide Med. Chir. Trans, v. xvii. D 2
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