540 ON PARTURITION. 



certain ends, actions, and uses. The structure, then, of the 

 uterus is such, that immediately on conception it shuts up 

 closely its cartilaginous aperture, for the purpose of retaining 

 the seed ; this part subsequently, at birth, and that the fetus 

 may escape, like fruit on the tree, comes to maturity and sof- 

 tens, and this not by any unfolding of its tissue, but by a change 

 in its natural character. For a loosening and softening takes 

 place even in the commissural attachments of bones, as in those 

 between the haunches and the sacrum, the pubes, and the pieces 

 of the coccyx. It is a truly wonderful thing that the little 

 point of a sprouting germ, say of the almond or another 

 fruit, should break the shell which a hammer can scarcely 

 crush ; or that the tender fibres of the ivy-root should pene- 

 trate the narrow chinks of the stone, and at length cause rents 

 in mighty walls. But it does not appear so marvellous that 

 the parts of the woman, when distended by labour, should reco- 

 ver their natural firmness, if we consider the state of the male 

 organ in coition, and how soon it subsequently becomes soft 

 and flaccid. A greater matter for wonder is it, and surpassing 

 all these " foldings," that the substance of the uterus, as the 

 foetus increases, not only is day by day enlarged and distended 

 or unfolded, as it were, to take Fabricius's notion, but that it 

 should become more thick, fleshy, and strong. We may even, 

 with Fabricius, marvel still more at the means by which the 

 mass of the uterus, by the intervention of the ordinary lochial 

 discharges, returns to its original size in so few days ; for this 

 is not the case with other tumours or abscesses ; these require 

 a longer period for dispersion, being made up of unnatural 

 matters, and such as require digestion, a process opposed to 

 the power of expulsion. Yet this is not more worthy of admi- 

 ration than the other works of nature, for " all things are full 

 of God," and the Deity of nature is ever visibly present. 



In the last place, it is object of great wonder to Fabricius 

 how those vessels of the foetus (meaning the oval opening 

 out of the vena cava into the pulmonary vein, and the duct 

 from the pulmonary artery into the aorta, on which subjects [ 

 have entered fully in my Essay on the Circulation of the 

 Blood) immediately after birth begin to shrivel up and be- 

 come obliterated. He is driven to that reason given by 



