Page:Manual of Antenatal Pathology and Hygiene.djvu/24

 2 ANTENATAL PATHOLOGY AND HYGIENE

of organisms so minute as to need the microscope for their detection was hardly likely, most unlikely indeed, to prove of benefit to the human race, yet pregnant all the while with surgical antisepsis and asepsis, and with the marvels of serum therapeutics. Antenatal Pathology, too, deals with small organisms — to wit, the little foetus, the tiny embryo, the altogether microscopic ovum and spermato- zoon. It thus merits the same condemnation ; it may receive a like justification.

Definition of Antenatal Pathology.

Antenatal Pathology is concerned with all the morbid processes which act upon the organism before birth, and with the effects which they produce by their action. In a narrow sense only can its limits be defined. It deals with the pathology of the individual during his fcEtal and embryonic existence, and in this respect may be regarded as the pathology of intrauterine life, and have the period of its action limited to ten lunar months ; but manifestly any such limit- ation is unsupported by the known facts. It cannot be doubted that pathological agencies are at work even before the occurrence of impregnation, and that they produce their effects upon the special- ised reproductive cells before these have united together, sperm with germ, to form the first rudiments of the individual. Further, the great doctrine of the continuity of the germ plasm pushes back the terminus a quo of the action of morbid agents beyond the immediate progenitors of the individual, and compels the student of Antenatal Pathology to take into account the medical history of earlier ancestors. Just as birth marks not a beginning but a stage in the life of the individual, so impregnation marks not a beginning but a stage in the life of the family. Again, and with regard now to the terminus ad qicem, Antenatal Pathology cannot be said to end with the close of intrauterine life, for it is impossible to prevent the morbid processes which occur before birth from projecting their effects, often with disastrous results, far into the life that is after birth. It is this projection of the antenatal into the postnatal which hinders the formation of an exact definition of Antenatal Pathology. It is necessary to think, not only of the effects of the action of morbid agents upon the organism still in utero, but also of the results which they produce upon the individual in extrauterine life. Incidentally it may be remarked that this fact constitutes one of the most cogent arguments in proof of the practical importance of the study of Antenatal Pathology. Since it has come to be recognised that all infants have not the same starting-point in their life race, so it has been borne in upon the practical physician and surgeon that it may be profitable to investigate the conditions which hinder them. Truly it matters little that the projection of the antenatal into the postnatal has interfered with the exactness of a definition, so long as it has compelled the attention of a medical public, until now perhaps but slightly inclined thereto. Where the profession has hung timidly back, the modern novelist has plunged boldly in, and has not hesitated to deal with any or all the j)roblems of Antenatal