The pathology and treatment of diseases of the ovaries / by Lawson Tait. --.

  • Tait, Lawson, 1845-1899.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The pathology and treatment of diseases of the ovaries / by Lawson Tait. --. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    very much those pf a villus of intestine. They spring from a small helicoid arteriole, having very thick muscular walls and two layers of fibres exactly like the arterioles of the kidney, in the outer wall of the ovisac. This arteriole breaks up at once into a ramifying mesh work, which seems to lie between the two coats of the sac, and which probably provides the vessels seen on the outer surface of the ovary at the point of rupture. From this meshwork straight wide capillaries run down in the centre of each lobe to its apex, giving off small branches to each side. At the apex of each villus or lobe (from a section it is quite im- possible to say which of these words is correct, though I think lobe would be the proper one) comes a vein which runs down be- tween the lobes to the point of vascular origin, and between these interlobular veins and the intralobular arteries there are universal systems of capillary communication. Along the free margins of the lobe seems to run a system of communicating canals, and this it is which causes me to regard this second system of vessels as the veins, together with the fact that I can- not make out that they have thickened muscular walls. In the absence of a successful double injection, which I have never accomplished, this interpretation of these structures may be in- accurate. Within the meshes of vessels are seen the regular round epithelial cells, so arranged as to give a general contour of convolution, and in the cavity are the altered blood-corpuscles. The lack of greater precision in this description is to be ex- plained by the fact that the preparation of an ovary fortunate in all respects is very difficult, and I have but seldom succeeded, and that for some years now I have been too much engaged with practice to follow up the research, which requires abundant and uninterrupted leisure. The disappearance of the red color of the central clot is the first change observed in the contracting cavity, and with this the whole forms a yellow convoluted patch. As it contracts the yellow color disappears, this change being effected in about two months in the non-pregnant state. The microscopic characters of the change consist in the disappearance of the cells, said to be brought about by fatty degeneration, though of this I have seen no evidence. This absorption is accompanied by the shriv- elling of the blood-vessels and their final disappearance, so that, in eight or ten months, nothing is left but a star-shaped cicatrix extending into the substance of the ovary; but this probably in time entirely disappears in a young ovary. After impregnation these changes are effected much more slowly, owing to the al- tered nutrition of the whole organs, so that the yellow color may not disappear for twelve or fourteen months (Farre), and the