An inquiry into the nature and causes of epilepsy; with the function of the spleen; and the use of the thyroid body, etc / [John Jackson].

  • Jackson, John, -1855
Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the nature and causes of epilepsy; with the function of the spleen; and the use of the thyroid body, etc / [John Jackson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    47/68 (page 39)
    tractions of the heart, pharynx, oesophagus, &c., are excited by appropriate internal, and indeed moving stimuli,—it would be an extraordinary deduction to conclude that the uterus is an exception to what appears to be a general rule, and that it is not the placenta which excites its contraction. In the ninth volume of the Medico-chirurgical Transactions, a case is recorded in which expulsion of a blighted foetus, and placenta, occurred at the seventh month of pregnancy, a living child still remaining up to the full period. The foetus was about the size of a foetus at the third month; the placenta was perfectly healthy, and natural in appearance, and of the size it usually presents at the seventh month. Now what are we to believe was the stimulus which ex¬ cited uterine contraction in this case, if it was not a contracting placenta ? If it (the uterine contrac¬ tion) were induced by the mere presence of a dead foetus, and of a non-contracting, though still living, placenta, why did not their expulsion take place sooner ? If the uterus, unsolicited by the placenta in question, took upon itself to contract, why did it cease its action after the separation and expulsion of a part only of its contents, and retain the remain¬ der up to the full period of gestation ? and, again, if separation of the placenta be the effect entirely of uterine contraction, and the placenta itself affords no assistance in that separation, how happened it that in this instance the uterine contractions which were adequate to effect the separation of one placenta, did not produce that of both ? It is not improbable