Observations illustrating the anatomical structure and physiological history of monsters with eventration / by Charles Henry Hallett.

  • Hallett, Charles Henry.
Date:
[1847]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations illustrating the anatomical structure and physiological history of monsters with eventration / by Charles Henry Hallett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    structure is always present in connection with an eventration, whether slight or grave, although it has been often overlooked or been unperceived by the observer, in consequence of havitig been lacerated and destroyed during labour, or of having been adherent throughout its whole extent to the displaced viscera. In both these cases, the viscera would perhaps be described, as they have often been hitherto, as naked or devoid of covering. Such statements might be made very naturally, if the observer happen to be unacquainted with the structure, or the means of detecting the existence of the sac when it is firmly adherent and inseparably united nearly throughout its whole extent to the eventrated viscera; but a previous knowledge of the subject, and a little attention and dexterity, will enable those who have opportunities of investigating and examining the anatomy of these curious aberrations of nature, to satisfy them- selves of the existence of the sac, and of the exact nature of its component parts. It invariably consists of two membranes resembling each other in their general appearance and in their ultimate structure; sometimes, however, a third membrane is added to the sac, but its presence in it appears to be accidental, and is to be ascribed to the numerous adhesions which had been contracted between the layers of the peritoneum. These two membranes are occasionally distinct from each other, but are more frequently united together or to the viscera by lymph, when they may be readily distinguished and separated from one another at the margin of the fissure in the parietes, where a space equalling the whole thickness of the parietes intervenes between them. The outer of the two membranes is the amnion still un- changed. The inner membrane is the parietal layer of the peritoneum. I mention this again and in this place, because a different analysis of the sac has been given by two talented observers, Breschet and Meckel,* who agree in referring the outer membrane to the amnion, but consider the inner to be the chorion. Breschet supposes the inner membrane, or chorion, to be lost in the cutis vera, Meckel, again, imagines it to be continuous with, and not the parietal layer of the peri- toneum. But both these opinions are incorrect. The passage of this membrane behind the imperfect abdominal parietes, its exhibiting the usual bluish translucency of a serous membrane, and moreover its evident serous structure in all parts, at once show its exact nature, and prove it to be the parietal layer of the peritoneum. My own observations show that the pleura will also be con- nected with the sac when the thoracic viscera are eventrated. * In the works already cited. ,
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