On the foetus in utero, as inoculating the maternal with the peculiarities of the paternal organism : and on the influence thereby exerted by the male on the constitution and the reproductive powers of the female / by Alexander Harvey.

  • Harvey, Alexander, 1811-1889.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the foetus in utero, as inoculating the maternal with the peculiarities of the paternal organism : and on the influence thereby exerted by the male on the constitution and the reproductive powers of the female / by Alexander Harvey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    14/16 (page 14)
    It seems not improbable, at least, that such cases may have been observed by him. They would not, indeed, even were they nume- rous, invalidate the inference obviously drawn by him from his other observations, provided they were really exceptional. They would merely show that the fact does not hold universally or abso- lutely. But should the inference be in the meantime disputed, as I think it well may, it can only be determined, in the affirmative, by proofs of the same general kind with those by which (for example) the contagious property of certain diseases is established,—to wit, by comparative observations on the large scale, showing,—first, that native females who have once had fruitful connection with European males, are, subsequently, as compared with other native females who have had no such connection, much less fruitful with males of their own race; and, secondly, that no other common cir- cumstance, save that of such connection, can be ascertained to exist in the case of most of the women that become barren, and not to exist in the case of most of those that are fruitful.1 If future inquiry thus directed shall verify the inference, which at present can only be regarded as an hypothesis, it will establish a general principle in the physiology of generation of the highest interest and importance. Assuming, however, that it is well- founded, and will hereafter be proved to be a fact, it were vain, perhaps, in the present state of our knowledge, to attempt an ex- planation of it; but, with regard to its bearing on the subject of this paper, I am inclined to think, from the facts already adduced in these pages—uncertain as some of them may be—that the sterility is quite as likely to be owing to the system of the female being somehow altered or affected, during her pregnancy, by the foetus begotten by the European, as to a loeed change in the general mass of ova effected by the mere act of intercourse, i. e., the mere application to them of the semen of the European. Our know- ledge, indeed, of the conditions essential to impregnation, and of the mode in which it is accomplished, does not warrant us to say that the change cannot be exclusively local. But the facts ascer- tained of late years, as to immature ova occupying the centre of the ovary,—as to the ova undergoing a process of maturation and coming to the surface of the ovary, prior to, and in order to, im- pregnation,—and as to the mature ova passing off at each monthly period, and becoming blighted when not impregnated, tend rather to set aside the notion of local affection, and therefore to give pro- bability to the other view. And if this other view should be estab- lished, the fact itself would clearly furnish additional testimony to the doctrine, and would merge in the still more general fact, that the foetus in utero does inoculate the system of the female with the peculiarities of that of the male. The alleged relative sterility of the native female, after intercourse 1 See Alison’s Outlines of Pathology and Practice of Medicine, p- 07.