Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 2 of 2).djvu/38

 556 THE MEMBRANES.

extracted entire. In cloven-footed animals, which conceive within the horns of the uterus, and also in the solidungula, one ovum only of this kind is found, and that stretching up into either horn of the uterus : and although these animals some- times produce one, sometimes two young at a birth, and so sometimes one, sometimes two colliquaments are found, one in the right, the other in the left horn of the uterus, yet the two are always contained in one and the same ovum.

In other animals, however, the number of ova answers to the number of foetuses, and within them are as many colliqua- ments : this is the case in the dog, cat, mouse, and other animals of this kind with teeth in either jaw. In cloven- footed animals the ovum is shaped like a saddle-bag : the form, in fact, under which Fabricius represented the allantois. In the mare, the figure of the uterus internally resembles an ob- long bag ; in the woman it is of a globular form.

In animals in whom the " conception" adheres to the uterus, (and in very many it does not do so until the foetus is fully formed), this takes place in various modes. In some it is ad- herent in one place by the intervention of a fleshy substance, which in the woman is called the "placenta," from its resem- blance to a round cake (placenta) : in others it is attached at many points by certain fleshy bodies, or " carunculse :" these are five in number in the hind and doe; more numerous, but of smaller size, in the cow ; and in the sheep they are in great numbers and of various sizes. In dogs and cats these fleshy bodies entirely surround each ovum like a girdle. A similar substance, in the hare and mole, grows to the side of the uterus : like the human placenta, which embraces about half the " conception," (just as the cup does the acorn at the commencement of its growth), it is attached by its convex aspect to the uterus, and by its concave surface to the chorion.

With these observations premised, I shall now state my opinions on the humours, membranes, fleshy substance of the uterus, and the distribution of the umbilical vessels, in the order described by Fabricius.

The words Sevrtpa and wrttpa are correctly understood by Fabricius 1 to answer to "secundse" and "secundina" (the

1 Cap. v.

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