A manual of midwifery / by Alfred Meadows.

  • Alfred Meadows
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of midwifery / by Alfred Meadows. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    107/474 page 85
    CHAPTEE IV. MOLE PREGNANCY. Under the term mole have been included a great variety of substances having no other relation to one another than the fact that they were morbid products expelled from the uterine cavity. Properly speaking, how- ever, as Froriep observes, every mole is a blighted ovum, which has been the product of conception; it is important to bear this point in mind. Among the substances which have been misnamed mole are polypoid growths, mem- branous exudations from the vagina or uterus, coagula in which the colouring matter had been absorbed, cal- careous tumours, hardened menstrual secretion, &c. Eegarding a mole, then, as some form of blighted ovum, there are three characters which it may assume:— 1. That in which the membranes have become greatly hypertrophied, so as to form a thick fleshy mass, while the ovum itself is found not to be developed in any cor- responding degree. 2. Where haemorrhage has taken place into the placental cells, or between the layers of the decidua, forming what has been called an apoplexy of the ovum. 3. That peculiar diseased condition of the chorion villi to which the term vesicular or hydatidiform mole, or hyda- tidiform degeneration of the placenta, has been given. All these several varieties of blighted ova are either the result of the early death of the embryo, or else they oc- casion it; and there is this practical point to notice, that when the embryo dies early, and the product is not speedily expelled, it often happens that what remains takes on a very rapid development, so that the uterus becomes much more enlarged than is usual at that par- ticular period of gestation. This occurrence is owing pro- bably to the fact that the structures which are now being developed are of lower organization and less complex form than the normal foetus; hence at the third month the uterus may appear as large as it should be at the fifth.
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