An account of two cases in which ovules, or their remains, were discovered in the Fallopian tubes of unimpregnated women who had died during the period of menstruation / by H. Letheby ; communicated by T.B. Curling.

Henry Letheby

Date:: 1852

Credit: An account of two cases in which ovules, or their remains, were discovered in the Fallopian tubes of unimpregnated women who had died during the period of menstruation / by H. Letheby ; communicated by T.B. Curling. 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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$filtrated with blood. 4thly, and lastly, there was the cavity to which I have before alluded. When the ovaries had become firm and hard by the coagulating action of the spirit, sections were made into them at various parts; by which means a number of yellow bodies (false corpora lutea) in different stages of degeneration were brought into view. Some of these bodies were rather large, and one of them contained a well- defined clot, the summit of which communicated with a cicatrix on the surface of the ovary (see the preparation). This circumstance led me to conclude that it was the remains of an old Graafian follicle, from which, at perhaps the last catamenial period, an ovule had escaped. The Fallopian tubes were highly congested, especially at their fimbriated extremi- ties, where, from the abundance of turgid capillary vessels, the tubes assumed a bright scarlet appearance. The cavities of the oviducts were filled with, and much distended by, a thick bloody mucus, which readily escaped from their peritoneal apertures when the tubes were subjected to slight pressure between the finger and thumb. Both of the Fallopian tubes were carefully laid open by means of a pair of fine scissors—the operation being conducted on a clean white plate, containing a little water,—and their contents were minutely examined. The right tube did not present any object worthy of notice ; but the left one contained, at about ] inch from its distal extremity, a small white vesicular-looking body, which on being floated out into the water, was found to be rather ragged on its surface, and to have the size of the cavity noticed in the recently ruptured Graafian follicle. This body was sub- mitted to microscopical examination. When viewed as an opake object, nothing could be made out beyond the fact that it was covered with white flocculi. It was then placed between two pieces of glass, and examined by the aid of transmitted light; but it was too opake for the eye to distinguish its structure, notwithstanding that the flocculi were very translucent and were seen to be made up of oval nucleated cells (see fig. 6). By the employment of slight pressure the body was readily crushed, and then I could perceive that it was composed of a mass of nucleated cells, among which, at one part, there was a number of highly refractive oil-globules (see fig. 5). The result of this investigation led me to think that the body in question was an ovule, the elements of which had been so far disarranged by the pressure, that the membrana granulosa and yelk-globules were the only recognisable constituents of it. The fluid contained in the uterus and Fallopian tubes were likewise subjected to microscopical examination. That removed from the former was found to consist of numerous blood-discs, most of which were strongly beaded at their edges; of much cylindrical epithelium, some of which was distinctly ciliated ; of a large quantity of granular corpuscles, like exudation cells; of a few white globules, similar to those found in blood, many of which had apparently passed into the form of spindle-shaped or fusiform bodies by the elongation of their opposite ends ; and of a thick gelatinous fluid which united all the elements together (see fig. 3). That from the latter, namely, i 2$