310 GENERATION. 



ovum, is still regarded as entirely accurate, and answers the 

 requirements of science at the present day, even in its 

 medico-legal aspects, as well as in 1847, when, his observations 

 were published. 1 



When a discharged ovum has been fecundated, the corpus 

 luteum passes through its various stages of development and 

 retrogression much more slowly than the ordinary corpus lu- 

 teum of menstruation. It is then called, to distinguish it 

 from the latter, the true corpus luteum. We cannot do bet- 

 ter than to quote, in the words of Coste, the description of 

 the changes which this body undergoes in pregnancy : 



" I have followed, with the greatest care, in the pregnant 

 female, all the phases of this retrogression. This commences 

 to be really appreciable toward the end of the third month. 

 During the fourth month, the corpus luteum diminishes by 

 nearly a third, and toward the end of the fifth, it is ordinarily 

 reduced one-half. It still forms, however, during the first 

 days after parturition, and in the greatest number of cases, a 

 tubercle which has a diameter of not less than from f to -J- of 

 an inch. The tubercle afterward diminishes quite rapidly ; 

 but it is nearly a month before it is reduced to the condition 

 of a little, hardened nucleus, which persists more or less as 

 the last vestige of a process so slow in arriving at its final 

 term. Nevertheless, there is nothing absolute in the retro- 

 grade progress of this phenomenon. I have seen women, dead 

 at the sixth and even the eighth month of pregnancy, present 

 corpora lutea as voluminous as others at the fourth month. 



" Though it may not be, in general, that, after parturition, 



1 Dr. Robert Knox published, in 1844, a table of measurements of the corpus 

 luteum at various stages of gestation, two of the observations being his own, and 

 the others, taken from different authors. Dr. Knox mentioned true and false 

 corpora lutea, but evidently had no distinct idea of their differences. His article 

 seems to be intended to show that the paper on the same subject, by Sir Everard 

 Home, was composed of inexact statements borrowed from the unpublished 

 writings of John Hunter. (Kxox, Contributions to Anatomy and Physiology. 

 On the Corpus Luteum. The London Medical Gazette, 1844, New Series, vol. i., 

 p. 605.) 



