878 GENEKATIOK 



posed to be the remains of the epithelium of the follicle. The great mass of this wall, 

 however, is composed of large nucleated cells, containing fatty globules and granules 

 of reddish or yellowish pigmentary matter. The thickness of the wall is about one- 

 eighth of an inch, at its deepest portion. 



After about the third week, the corpus luteum begins to retract ; its central portion 

 and the convoluted wall become paler, and, at the end of seven or eight weeks, a small 

 cicatrix marks the point of rupture of the follicle. 



The above are the changes which occur in the Graafian follicles after their rupture 

 and the discharge of ova, when the ova have not been fecundated ; and the bodies thus 

 produced are called false corpora lutea, as distinguished from corpora lutea found after 

 conception, which are called true corpora lutea. 



Corpus Luteum of Pregnancy. Before the process of spontaneous ovulation and its 

 connection with menstruation were understood, anatomists were unable to make a defi- 

 nite distinction between the corpus luteum following the discharge of an ovum without 

 fecundation, called the corpus luteum of menstruation, and the corpus luteum of preg- 

 nancy. Coste exactly described the various points of distinction between them ; and 

 his account of the differences in the development of these bodies, dependent upon the 

 non-fecundation or the fecundation of the 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. 



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 luteum of menstruation. It is then called, to distinguish it from the latter, the 

 true corpus luteum. We cannot do better 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 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. 



u Although it may not be, in general, that, after parturition, the corpora lutea dis- 

 appear, it is nevertheless not without examples that they disappear much more prompt- 

 ly. I have had the opportunity of examining the body of a woman, dead in the course 

 of the eighth month of pregnancy, in whom the absorption was already complete. 

 Facts of this kind are doubtless very rare, as only one has occurred in my observa- 

 tions, notwithstanding the numerous researches to which I have devoted myself for a 

 long time. . . . 



" There exists a notable difference between the corpora lutea which are formed as 

 the sequence of conception, and those which occur aside from the conditions developed 

 by impregnation. The duration of the former is much longer than that of the latter, 

 and the volume becomes, also, much more considerable, although their nature is, in 

 truth, identical. I have too often had occasion to remark this, in the ovaries of suicides, 

 to retain the slightest doubt in this regard." 



The following table, q.uoted from Coste, shows the different stages of the corpus 

 luteum of pregnancy. It will be remembered that the corpus luteum of menstruation is 

 at its maximum of development at the end of about three weeks, when it measures half 



