Obstetrics : the science and the art / by Charles D. Meigs.

  • Meigs, Charles D. (Charles Delucena), 1792-1869.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Obstetrics : the science and the art / by Charles D. Meigs. 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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    contains the egg, and the minute egg itself, which is too small to be readily seen by the naked eye. The human ovary is about an inch in length, half an inch in depth, and more than a quarter of an inch thick; in shape, it is like a flattened olive. Each ovary is attached to an angle of the womb—one on the right and the other on the left. It is connected with the uterus by a short footstalk.of a fibrous struc- ture, which is called the ligament of the ovary. The ovaries lie behind the Fallopian tubes, inclosed in a duplicature of the peritoneum, that adheres firmly to the proper covering or coat of the organ; so that the ovary is invested by a serous membrane or indusium, as the liver, stomach, or intestines are. 227. Underneath the serous covering lies the strong white fibrous coat, or tunica albuginea, which is a closed sac containing the stroma, the peculiar tissue of the organ. There is thus no proper excretory duct for this organ; nevertheless, the Fallopian tube becomes, upon occasions, the vector of its product. The connection of the vector tube with the organ exists, in all probability, only during the few moments of the sexual excitement, or orgasm. In the embryo, however, as late as the sixth month, the end of the Fallopian tube is permanently attached to the ovarium—before the seventh month, the connection is broken. (See Rosenmuller, Quasdam de Ovariis Embryonum et Fcetuum Humanorum, p. 11.) I have a specimen of foetus at the sixth month, in which the detachment has not taken place. 228. The stroma of the ovary, with which the closed sac of the albuginea is filled, is a peculiar concrete, consisting, apparently of a rather dense cellular tela, of a salmon color. Throughout the stroma are to be seen numerous delicate arterioles and venules, that are the distal branches of the ovaric artery. It is worthy of observation, that the blood of this circulation is brought from a great distance, since the ovaric artery arises for one side from the emulgent, and for the other from the aorta itself. As the ovaries, like the testicles in the male, are originally formed high up in the abdomen, near the kidneys, an economical purpose was answered by deriving their circulation from these sources. Whether there be any further and peculiar eco- nomical end to be attained by drawing this blood from such a distant point, remains unexplained. 229. If the tunica albuginea of an ovary be divided with a scalpel, the stroma may then be readily torn asunder by pulling the edges of the incision apart with the fingers. The ovary of a mammal, when examined for the purpose, exhibits several watery vesicles, whose trans- lucency renders the largest of them visible through the indusia or coats of the organ. By cutting the ovary open, and carefully dissecting