The early relationship of the oosperm to the endometrium / by James Oliver.

  • Oliver, James
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The early relationship of the oosperm to the endometrium / by James Oliver. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    monkey, the germ mass is detained in the uterus neither by a decidua reflexa nor yet by a decidua capsularis, but by osmotaxis and chemiotaxis, and under ordinary circumstances these same agencies in the human female cause not only a halt, but arrest the progress of the oosperm immediately this body reaches the cavity of the uterus. The condi- tion of affairs, which obtains in the lower mam- mals, does not encourage us to accept the tenet that the oosperm is ever lodged in an accessory cham- ber in the cavity of the uterus, and clinically we are justified in rejecting the dogma altogether. If we assume that encapsulation takes place through the oosperm secreting some substance which attacks and eats away a limited portion of the uterine wall it is, nevertheless, impossible for us to believe that in this procedure Nature would never err, and that we should never find some evidence of this solvent ma- terial exceeding its physiological function and caus- ing a too extensive destruction of the uterine tis- sues. Errors of this kind are often observed. Take the dissolutionary changes which should restore the uterus to its normal state after parturition. These dissolutionary changes may transcend the usual amount and may leave the uterus in a state of superinvolution, the utility of the organ being for- ever thereafter annulled. Similarly in the oosperm itself, when about the fifth or sixth week of preg- nancy, the utility of the villous bodies constituting nearly four fifths of the chorion is abolished, the atrophic process may invade the placental as well as the nonplacental area, causing a hyperatrophy of the villous bodies of the chorion, and no placenta or a very inefficient one may thereby result. In the human female, after the fifth or sixth week of gestation, metabolism in the embryo is effected through the medium of a limited portion of the endometrial lining, the decidua placentalis; but prior to this, both before and after the whole villous 3
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