Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/598

 uterine mammae, or fountains and receptacles of nutritive albumen.

The month of December at an end, the caruncles adhere less firmly to the uterus than before, and a small matter suffices to detach them. The larger the foetus grows, indeed, the nearer it is to its term, the more readily are the caruncles detached from the uterus, so that, like ripe fruit from the tree, they slip at length from the uterus of themselves, and as if they had formed an original element in the conception.

Separated from the uterus you may perceive in the prints which they leave points pouring out blood ; these are the arte- ries that entered them. But if you now detach the conception from the caruncles, no blood is effused ; none escapes, save from the ends of the vessels proceeding from the conception, although it does seem more consonant with reason to suppose that blood should be shed from the caruncles than from the conception when they are forcibly separated. For, as the caruncles or cotyledons have an abundance of uterine branches distributed to them, and they are generally believed to receive blood for the nourishment of the fretus, we should expect that they would appear replete with blood. Nevertheless, as I have said, they yield no blood either under milking or compression, and the reason of this is that they contain albumen rather than blood, and rather store up than prepare this matter. It seems mani- fest, therefore, that the fostus in utero is not nourished by its mother's blood, but by this albuminous fluid duly elaborated. It may even be perhaps that the adult animal is not nourished immediately by the blood, but rather by something mixed with the blood, which serves as the ultimate aliment ; as may per- haps be more particularly shown in our PHYSIOLOGY and parti- cular treatise on the Blood.

The truth of that passage of Hippocrates 1 where it said that " those whose acetabula or cotyledons are full of mucor, abort," has always been suspected by me ; for this is no excremen- titious matter or cause of miscarriage, but nourishment and a source of life. But Hippocrates, by the word acetabula, per- haps, understood something else than the parts so called in the uterus of the lower animals, for they are wanting in women ;

1 Lib. de Nat. Mul., de morb. vulg. et s. v, Aph. 45.