STUDIES ON ABORTUSES: A SURVEY OF PATHOLOGIC OVA 

 IN THE CARNEGIE EMBRYOLOGICAL COLLECTION. 



PREFACE. 



The following survey comprises a review and an analysis of conceptuses which 

 are classed as pathologic in the first 1,000 accessions to the collection of the 

 Department of Embryology of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The 

 majority of these accessions were included in the Johns Hopkins Medical School 

 collection. They had been collected with untiring effort by Professor Mall, with 

 the generous cooperation of numerous physicians, both at home and abroad, 

 during the course of two decades. The accompanying studies on special topics 

 are not, however, so limited, nor are they confined to pathologic conceptuses only. 

 Although closely related, they aim neither at completeness nor even at unity, 

 except as individual contributions. Since, with the exception of the tables, the 

 survey proper is limited to the first 1,200 accessions, with only such references to 

 the remainder of the collection as time permitted, it is very probable that some of 

 the results and conclusions drawn from them will not be fully supported by an 

 extension of this study to the material in the entire collection. This is due not 

 only to the fact that the abortuses received more recently are better preserved 

 and that the later histories are fuller, but also to the increasingly closer cooperation 

 with clinicians which often brings us very helpful clinical sidelights. Indeed, it 

 is this cooperation which alone can enable us satisfactorily to develop certain 

 aspects of the new field of antenatal pathology, and help to bring a final answer 

 to some of the many unsettled questions. Without the information which the 

 practitioner alone can furnish one often feels helpless; for although many of the 

 specimens are eloquent with facts, others remain entirely mute as to their story 

 because they appear wholly normal. 



The much larger series of abortuses composing the entire collection also 

 includes unique specimens which are the product of some rare experiment on the 

 part of nature. One is much less likely to find such specimens in a smaller and 

 hence less representative collection. What is lacking, however, in connection 

 with many of the specimens, otherwise so valuable, is the decidua. In the absence 

 of the latter it is often impossible to reach even a tentative conclusion regarding 

 the genesis of the abnormalities found in a particular specimen. In many instances 

 this defect could be easily remedied by an appeal to our many coworkers and 

 benefactors engaged in the practice of medicine. I am certain that they will gladly 

 save the decidua whenever possible, merely as a matter of cooperation, although 



NOTE In view of the suggestions made in Science (A. W. Meyer, 1919: A suggestion from Plato, with others, vol. 

 49, p. 530) some of which have been incorporated in the following pages, the title of this volume demands a word 

 of explanation. I have retained the word ova because the title had in part been decided upon. Moreover, the word 

 is still used in this sense in current medical literature, but we are not considering ova but conceptuses. Besides, a 

 considerable percentage of these undoubtedly are not pathologic or diseased, for surely post-mortem changes in 

 structure, however profound, can not strictly be regarded as pathologic; and since derangement of function is made 

 impossible by death, no matter how deformed or how infiltrated the tissues of an abortus may be with the cells of 

 maternal origin, it can not therefore be said to be diseased. A. W. M. 



