340 MALL. [VoL. XIX. 
“Yesterday I sent another specimen by express. It seemed 
to me that it would be a good specimen for you. April 7 was 
the date of the last menstruation; the abortion followed on 
July 5, 1906. The first flow and pain appeared on the night 
of July 4. The woman has been married four years; this was 
her first conception. Both she and her husband are very 
anxious to have a child, so the miscarriage could not have 
been aided. There was no incident, accident or otherwise to 
give cause for the abortion. The woman is unusually healthy 
and the miscarriage took place without chill or rise of tem- 
Fic. 364a.—The ovum. Natural size. 
perature. The specimen was placed in formalin, Io per cent, 
within two hours after its expulsion.” 
This history did not satisfy me, so I wrote Dr. Merrill 
asking a number of questions, for it is from specimens like 
this that we may hope to find the cause for such malforma- 
tions. His second letter, dated October 24, 1906, reads as 
follows: “This specimen is from the first conception, after 
several years of married life. The woman had been operated 
upon several years ago for appendicitis. She has not been 
altogether regular with her menstrual periods, and there 1s 
some pain connected with them. She had been treated, some 
