Ectopic pregnancy; its etiology, classification, embryology, diagnosis and treatment.

  • Webster, John Clarence, 1863-1950.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ectopic pregnancy; its etiology, classification, embryology, diagnosis and treatment. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    tion, however to the explanation of the early establishment of this relationship in normal pregnancy, on account of the great difficulties in the way of believing that menstruation is the process essential to the removal of the epithelium and the consequent laying bare of the connective tissue. These diffi- culties are as follows :— 1. Pregnancy may occur in a girl before the onset of men- struation, at a time, therefore, when the mucosa cannot be denuded by that process. 2. It may occur late during the period of lactation when there is no menstruation and after the mucosa has been com- pletely renewed. 3. It may take place at the menopause during a period of amenorrhoea. 4. Pregnancy may occur in the rudimentary horn of a mal- formed uterus, menstruation never having taken place in that horn {vide p. 92). 5. It may occur in periods of amenorrhcea associated with diseased conditions, e.g., ansemia, phthisis. 6. Clinical experience of cases of pregnancy following a single coitus shows that the ovum may begin to develop at any time —not necessarily immediately after menstruation. {Evidence in regard to this point, however, is of doubtful significance, otving to the uncertainty in our knoivledge as to hoiv long the spermatozoa, may remain in the genital tract, and how long the ovum may take in some cases to reach the uterus.) 7. In the great majority of the mammals menstruation does not take place, and in many of them we know that the early ovum develops in relation to the connective tissue of the mucosa, the superjacent epithelium being removed by the ovum itself. Indeed, it is not at all necessary to look to menstruation as the process by which the epithelium is removed. The absorptive