544 ON PARTURITION. 



Wherefore women are most prone to conceive either just be- 

 fore or just subsequent to the menstrual flux, for at these 

 periods there is a greater degree of heat and moisture,, two 

 conditions necessary to generation. In the same manner when 

 other animals are in heat, the genital organs are moist and 

 turgid. 



Such is the state of the uterus as I have found it before 

 birth. In pregnant women, as I have before stated, the uterus 

 increases in proportion to the foetus, and attains a great size. 

 Immediately after birth, I have seen it as large as a man's head, 

 more than a thumb's breadth in thickness, and loaded with 

 vessels full of blood. It is, indeed, most wonderful, and, as 

 Fabricius remarks, quite beyond human reason, how such a 

 mass can diminish to so vast an extent in the space of fifteen 

 or twenty days. It happens as follows : immediately on the 

 expulsion of the foetus and its membranes, the uterus gradually 

 contracts, narrows its neck, and shrinks inwardly into itself; 

 partly by a process of diaphoresis, partly by means of the lochia, 

 its bulk insensibly lessens ; and the neighbouring parts, bones, 

 abdomen, and all the hypogastric region, at the same time di- 

 minish and recover their firmness. The lochial discharge at first 

 resembles pure blood; it then becomes of a sanious character, like 

 the washings of flesh, and is otherwise pale and serous. At this 

 last stage, when no longer tinged with blood, the women call 

 it " the coming of the milk/' for the reason probably that at 

 that time the breasts are loaded with milk, and the lochia sen- 

 sibly diminish ; as if the nutritive matter was then transferred 

 to the breasts from the uterus. 



In other animals the process is shorter and simpler ; in them 

 the parts concerned recover their ordinary bulk and consistence 

 in one or two days. In fact, some, as the hare and rabbit, 

 admit the buck, and again become fecundated, an hour after 

 kindling. In like manner, I have stated that the hen admits 

 the cock immediately on laying. Women, as they alone have 

 a menstruous, so have they alone a lochial discharge ; added to 

 which they are exposed to disorders and perils immediately 

 after birth, either from the uterus, through feebleness, con- 

 tracting too soon, or from the lochia becoming vitiated or sup- 

 pressed. For it often happens, especially in delicate women, 

 that foul and putrid lochia set up fevers and other violent 



