CORPUS LUTEUM OF MENSTRUATION. 



715 



Fig. 234. 



HUMAN OVARY cut open, show- 

 ing a corpus luteum, divided longi- 

 tudinally ; three weeks after men- 

 struation. From a girl, twenty years 

 of age, dead of haemoptysis. 



and about 12 millimetres in depth. On its surface may be seen a 

 minute cicatrix, occupying the spot of the original rupture. 



On cutting it open at this time (Fig. 234), the corpus luteum is seen 

 to consist, as above described, of a central coagulum and a convoluted 

 wall. The coagulum is semi-transparent, 

 of a gray or light greenish color, more or 

 less mottled with red. The convoluted 

 wall is about 3 millimetres thick at its 

 deepest part, and of an indefinite yellow- 

 ish or rosy hue, not very different in 

 tinge from the rest of the ovarian tissue. 

 The convoluted wall and the contained 

 clot lie simply in contact with each other, 

 as at first, without any intervening or- 

 ganic connection ; and they may still be 

 readily separated from each other by the 

 handle of a knife or the flattened end of 

 a probe. The whole corpus luteum may 

 also be stripped out, or enucleated from 

 the ovarian tissue, just as might have 

 been done with the Graafian follicle pre- 

 viously to its rupture. When separated 

 in this way from the neighboring parts, it presents itself under the 

 form of a solid globular or flattened mass, with a convoluted external 

 surface covered with the remains of the connective tissue by which it; 

 was previously united with the substance of the ovary. 



We have had an opportunity of examining a corpus luteum of this 

 period, in an ovary immediately after its removal from the body of the 

 living woman. It was on the occasion of the extirpation by Prof. T, T. 

 Sabine, in 1874, of the left ovary for obstinate ovarian neuralgia, from 

 an unmarried woman, otherwise healthy, 25 years of age. 1 The last 

 menstrual period had terminated exactly three weeks before the date 

 of the operation, and a new one commenced twenty-four hours after- 

 ward. The extirpated ovary presented a perfectly normal appearance, 

 and contained a corpus luteum similar in all respects to that represented 

 in Figure 234. Its convoluted wall was fully formed, without any dis- 

 tinctly marked yellow tinge, and the central coagulum was partly, but 

 not entirely, decolorized. The patient recovered without difficulty. 



After the third week from the close of menstruation, the corpus 

 luteum passes into a retrograde condition. It diminishes perceptibly 

 in size, and the central coagulum continues to be absorbed and loses 

 still farther its coloring matter. The whole body undergoes a process 

 of partial atrophy ; and at the end of the fourth week it is less than 10 

 millimetres in its longest diameter (Fig. 235). The external cicatrix 

 may still usually be seen, as well as the point where the central coagu- 



1 New York Medical Journal, January, 1875, p. 37. 



