The pathology of ante-natal life : an address delivered before the Glasgow Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society / by J. W. Ballantyne.

Date:: 1898

Credit: The pathology of ante-natal life : an address delivered before the Glasgow Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society / by J. W. Ballantyne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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$ences in environment and in the strncture of the organisms acted upon. Teratology is thus brought into line with pathology, of which it is simply an obscure but not unimportant depart- ment ; and teratogenesis is seen to be simply pathogenesis, acting on an immature organism. There is a unity in morbid causes. Hereditary Tendencies. Manifestly this would be an incomplete sketch of ante-natal pathology if it contained no reference to hereditary tendencies. In addition to the external agencies, microbic and toxic, which determine disease in post-natal life, there is the predisposition to certain maladies, and tlie incomplete or complete inununity atrainst others which heredity brings to the organism, and udiicli gives to the organism its individuality. In ante-natal life, also, hereditary tendencies are evident both in the fVetal and in the embryonic periods. ]\Iany foetal diseases, such as ichthyosis, general dropsy, fcetal rickets, &c., are heieditaiy. In the nature of things it is seldom that direct heredity can be demonstrated, for, as has been explained, infants with such maladies rarely live, and therefore their progeny cannot be referred to; but that form of heredity known as family prevalance is very common in most fot'tal maladies. I have elsewhere^ referred to many instances of this in congenital sldii lesions, and have specially noted cases in which a woman had by one husband healthy children, and by a second spouse ichthyotic or dropsical infants, ddie sperm as well as the ovum may carry these tendencies. In embryonic life, also, the same tendencies are met with, and I have recorded cases of the birth of two and even of three anencephalic foetuses in the same family. I have also met with polydactyly in several generations, and in several individuals in the same generation. One very interesting- history I may give here. It was that of a woman showing a defective development of the muscles of one tliumb; her tirst child had hydrocephalus and absence of one thumb, and her second foetus was anencephalic and had one thumb represented bv a formless mass of skin-covered adipose tissue. Further nothin O' is better known in the artificial production of monstresities than the individuality of the germ, for no matter how strongly teratogenic the agency may be {e. (j., hydrocyanic acidl some organisms will escape its action and develop normally. I might extend and apply these observations to. 1 Diseases and Deformities of the Foetus, 1892-95, vols. i and iL$