EMM. | 108 
arrangement at the end of the section A of these 
lectures. 
It may be proper here the better to understand 
the force of the preceding outlines, to state, that 
the disgorging office of the uterus, expels a fluid 
which was formerly deemed a simple evacuation 
of redundant blood’ from a plethoric viscus, 
obeying the vicissitudes of lunar influences, 
vencreal desires, concoctive fermentation, &c. &c. 
Among the distinguished writers who deemed this 
discharge a periodical hemorrhage of a plethoric 
viscus was Cullen. The opinion which refers to 
the uterus a glandular office, and esteems the 
catamenia as the secreted product of that secerning 
function, and as a fluid of wnique properties, is now 
entertained by many physiologists. ‘The originat- 
ing of this theory has been refered severa ly to 
Bordieu, Sanders and Mr. John Hunter. Dr. 
Craven’s, inaugural dissertation published in 
Edinburgh in 1778, which I have not seen, is said 
to contain it. It is found in Bordieu’s “ Traités 
des Glandes,” and Allen in his synopsis medicine, 
develops it, as the theory of an author not named 
by him. But it is an opinion of much earlier date, 
than the period at which either of the authors just 
named, wrote or published. It is clearly promul- 
gated in the work of Rammazini as early as 1770, 
and he speaks of it as nothing new, and without 
claiming to himself the fact of having originated 
it. Dr. Dewees, who contends for the existence 
of a mucous lining of the uterus, with the power 
of performing what mucous membranes do perform 
elsewhere, does not believe that the catamenia are 
‘a mere exudation from the internal surface of the 
uterus, constituting a species of hemorrhage,” but 
to be a ** genuine secretion,” from that membrane. 
He believes the change wrought upon the coagula- 
