A system of midwifery : including the diseases of pregnancy and the puerperal state / by William Leishman.

  • William Leishman
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A system of midwifery : including the diseases of pregnancy and the puerperal state / by William Leishman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    100/882 page 70
    ment during delivery, which may not be surmounted by the application of ordinary principles. Cases in which the arrest of development has taken place after birth, are to be placed in a special category. At the ordinary period of puberty, the signs which indicate sexual maturity do not appear, while the uterus is found still to present the characters peculiar to infancy or childhood. In these cases, which are almost certainly pro- ductive of sterile marriages, there is often an absence of the vaginal portion of the cervix; and the other infantine conditions of the womb may be exhibited in every particular, such as the exaggera- tion of the forward curve which, in a smaller degree, we have indicated as the normal adult condition, the persistence, within the cavity, of rugae, similar to those of the cervix, and the thinness of the parietes. Of the Ovaries.—Projecting on either side from the posterior surface of the broad ligament, and invested with a special fold of its posterior layer, are the important organs within which is elaborated that which the woman contributes to the propagation of her species, analogous therefore in this, as in other respects, to the testicles of the male. They are connected (See Figs. 27, 28, and 29) with the uterus by a special liga- ment already described, and also through the Fallopian tubes, to one of the fimbriae of which they are permanently adherent. In shape, the ovary is a flattened oval. It varies greatly in size, according to age, and in different individuals of a similar age ; but it may be set down as, on an average, about eighty grains in weight, and an inch and a half in extreme length. From the manner in which it is embraced by the peri- toneum, it is free on two sides, and on the posterior border, and attached to the broad ligament by a kind of mesentery along the anterior border only, where, between the layers, the vessels and nerves enter. The nature of the relation subsisting between the ovary and the peritoneum has of late been a subject of much interest to physiologists, and the observations of Waldeyer* certainly now leave no room for doubt that anatomists have been in error in describing the ovary as invested by the peritoneum in the same manner as the other viscera. The structure of the peritoneum proper ceases abruptly at a fold near the hilus, and quite visible to the naked eye. This fold surrounds the ovary in such a way that the greater portion of its free surface consists, not of the peritoneum, but of a special layer, continuous with the peritoneum, presenting, on microscopic examination, a prismatic epithe- lium instead of the laminated form which exists in the serous membranes. This prismatic epithelium is intimately connected with the origin of the * Eierstock unci Ei. Leipzig, 1870.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3