A practical compendium of midwifery : being the course of lectures on midwifery, and on the diseases of women and infants, delivered at St. Bartholomew's Hospital / by the late Robert Gooch ; prepared for publicaton by George Skinner.

  • Gooch, Robert, 1784-1830.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical compendium of midwifery : being the course of lectures on midwifery, and on the diseases of women and infants, delivered at St. Bartholomew's Hospital / by the late Robert Gooch ; prepared for publicaton by George Skinner. 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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    germ, but it is the female who produces and retains it. When microscopes were first applied to the purposes of physiological research by Leuvvenhoeck. he examined the semen of male animals, in which he saw, or thought he saw, animalcules moving about in different directions; and these he affirmed to be animals in miniature of the same kind as those in whom they were produced. Even in the time of Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, all that was known about conception was, that if a male copulated with a female, in a certain number of days after impregnation a fcetus might be dis- covered in the uterus of the female, but how it came there the philosophers knew not. Harvey, in the reign of Charles II., was allowed to kill and dissect deer at all periods after impregnation : the ovaries were not suspected by him to be important parts of the organs of generation. To De Graaf we are in- debted for the present theory. He examined the generative organs of rabbits at different periods after impregnation, in order to ascertain what change had taken place in them. In thirty-six hours he found the ovaries had undergone a chancre : these, in the unimpregnated state, contain a number of small vesicles filled with a transparent gelatinous fluid, which, after their discoverer, have been called vesi- culse Graaffianse. At this period, one of these vesi- cles was found to be elevated, and to project on the surface of the ovary like a minute nipple; in about forty-eight hours this enlarged vesicle had disap- peared, and a cavity was left behind. What had become of it ? There could be but one road ; the ovaries at this period, were firmly embraced by the fimbriated extremities of the Fallopian tubes, which in the natural state are at a little distance from the ovaries, and but slightly attached to them ;—he said the vesicle must have proceeded through the Fallo- pian tube into the uterus. He endeavoured to trace it by slitting up the tube, but he did not at first succeed