CHAPTER I. 

 ORIGIN OF THE COLLECTION. 



The collection of human embryos belonging to the Carnegie Institution of 

 Washington owes its origin to thirty years of untiring effort on the part of one of 

 the authors (Mall). The first specimen was obtained while he was a student under 

 Professor Welch in the Pathological Department of the Johns Hopkins University; 

 very soon another, in excellent state of preservation, was added. After his (Mall's) 

 transfer to Clark University in 1899, embryo No. 2 was studied and modeled in 

 wax. This was the first reconstruction of a human embryo ever made in America 

 and at that time the most elaborate one in existence. In 1890 this specimen was 

 offered to Professor His, who refused to accept the gift, and returned it, together 

 with several from his own collection, expressing the hope that this small number 

 of specimens might serve as a nucleus for a much larger collection. With the 

 subsequent foundation of the University of Chicago, the collection was transferred 

 there, and during the following year a few additions were made. Now somewhat 

 augmented, it was returned to Baltimore in 1893, at the opening of the Johns 

 Hopkins Medical School, and here it grew for a number of years, at first slowly, 

 then more rapidly, until it was finally taken over by the Carnegie Institution of 

 Washington in 1915. 



In the beginning each specimen was labeled with the name of the physician 

 who donated it, but it was soon found that this method was not accurate. Bottles 

 were easily misplaced and notes lost from the files were not missed unless marked 

 with consecutive numbers. Therefore, after the collection had grown to about 100 

 specimens, a system of numbering, somewhat in the order of accession, was 

 adopted. However, a review of the catalogue later disclosed the fact that some of 

 the specimens collected at Worcester followed in numerical order those collected at 

 Chicago, so that for the first 100 specimens the sequence of accession can not be 

 viewed as chronologically reliable. From an examination of table 1, in which the 

 specimens are arranged in hundreds (or centuries), it will be observed that the 

 first century includes catalogue numbers 1 to 98, the second century, 99 to 205, 

 etc. These numerical discrepancies are due to the fact that quite frequently the 

 same number is given to two or more specimens, as illustrated in the first 

 century; or, as illustrated in the second century, a number once used may be 

 discarded subsequently because the specimen is found to contain no remnants of 

 an ovum. The latter specimens are finally marked on the catalogue card "No 

 pregnancy." In this way we have been able to retain in the catalogues of the 

 collection ovaries and uteri from non-pregnant women. The second column of the 

 table shows the time required to collect each 100 specimens. It took 10 years 

 for the first, 4 for the second, and 2 for the third 100; but after the collection had 

 been transferred to the Carnegie Institution, about 400 specimens were collected 

 in one year. It will be observed also that approximately 60 physicians contributed 



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