The internal surface of the uterus after delivery / by J. Matthews Duncan.

  • James Matthews Duncan
Date:
[1857?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The internal surface of the uterus after delivery / by J. Matthews Duncan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1/8
    INTERNAL SURFACE OF THE UTERUS AFTER DELIVERY. By J. MATTHEWS DUNCAN, M.D., F.R.C.P.E., LECTURER ON MIDWIFERY, ETC., ETC. [REPRINTED FROM THE EDINBURGH MEDICAL JOURNAL, DECEMBER 1857.] It must appear astonishing to all who reflect on the recent extra¬ ordinary advances of physiological and pathological anatomy, that a subject so immensely important, in relation to health and disease, as the condition of the internal surface of the uterus after delivery, should have so long remained in its present condition of imperfect description. This state of matters cannot be the result of any extraordinary difficulty in the subject; it may, indeed, with more reason be ascribed to the want of such difficulties as excite the generous emulation of the pursuers of science. In the early part of the year 1853, I presented to the Physio¬ logical Society of Edinburgh, a communication on this subject (see Monthly Journal of Medical Science for September 1853), and, sub¬ sequently, in the same year, published an article in the British and Foreign Medico-Cliirurgical Review (No. for October, p. 506), en¬ titled, u The Internal Surface of the Uterus after Delivery ; its Analogies,” etc. The views enunciated in that paper were entirely at variance with those generally taught in this and other countries. Since its publication, little progress has been made. The present short article is written in order to lay before the profession the most recent state of the subject. It will also serve to rectify the mistakes of some authors who have erroneously interpreted my views, and to sweep away the ill-concealed ingenuity of others, who have tried to amalgamate them with the old hypothetical notions, and to entangle them in the support of erroneous pathological doctrines. In the paper referred to, I remarked that, in the history gene¬ rally, if not universally, given, of the termination of parturition and the restoration of the inner surface of the uterus to its pristine