The experimental production of the maternal part of the placenta in the rabbit / by Leo Loeb.

  • Leo Loeb
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The experimental production of the maternal part of the placenta in the rabbit / by Leo Loeb. 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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    deciduae produced experimentally in the guinea-pig and in the rabbit differed in the same way as the normal deciduae in these two species. The following experiments were, therefore, carried out: 1. In four female rabbits which had been kept separated from males for some time previous to the operation and which were not pregnant, no deciduomata were formed after the usual incisions into the uterus had been made. We found only edematous mucosa on microscopic examination. 2. Three rabbits were operated, 3 to 5 days after copulation. In two of these animals the nodules, formed ten days after the opera- tion, were examined microscopically. They showed the above mentioned characters of the maternal part of the placenta of the rabbit. 3. These latter experiments were, perhaps, open to the objec- tion that ova had come into contact with that part of the mucosa which gave rise to the formation of decidual tissue. Although such an occurrence was extremely unlikely inasmuch as the con- tinuity of the uterine cavity had been interrupted, through the operation, at many places, two other experiments were performed, in which, in each case, both fallopian tubes were tied at their junction with the uterine horns about hours after copulation. Seven days later the ordinary incisions were made into the uterus. Ten days later many decidual nodules were formed in both cases, which, on microscopic examination, showed the characteristic fea- tures of the rabbit placenta, namely, the vacuolated cells, the plas- modial changes of the blood vessels, and besides, the formation of multinucleated cells in the uterine epithelial layer, which repre- sented the first step in the formation of epithelial plasmodia. These changes, however, did not occur at every point simulta- neously. The plasmodial transformation of the blood vessels was sometimes seen without the accompanying formation of vacuolar cells ; at other places both changes were present in the same area. On the whole, the nodules in the rabbit were, in proportion to the size of the rabbit uterus, considerably smaller than the deciduo- mata formed in the guinea-pig. From these investigations the conclusion can be drawn that the experimentally produced deciduomata differ in the rabbit and