AND PREGNANCY. 369 



3. Dr. Haighton imagines that the bursting of the vesicle 

 is the sympathetic effect of the semen in the vagina or uterus.* 

 Now although on the side where the tube was divided the 

 ovarium did discharge the contents of some vesicles, it is not 

 proved to have done this through the operation of the semen. 

 The venereal ardor alone was shewn in the observations of 

 Mr. Saumarez as well as in those of Mr. Cruikshank (and the 

 same has been remarked in the human female) f to produce, 



* " That the semen first stimulates the vagina, os uteri, cavity of the uterus, 

 or all of them. 



" By sympathy, the ovarian vesicles enlarge, project, and burst. 



** By sympathy, the tubes incline to the ovaria, and having embraced them 

 convey the rudiments of the foetus into the uterus. 



• " By sympathy, the uterus makes the necessary preparations for perfecting 

 the formation and growth of the foetus, and, 



" By sympathy, the breasts furnish milk for its support after birth." 



There is reason, however, from one passage, to suppose that Dr. Haighton 

 believes the semen to pass no farther than the vagina. After dwelling upon the 

 opinion opposite to his own, he says, " The difficulties which were opposed to 

 the conveyance of the semen by the tubes, were, as we should expect, intended 

 to prepare the way for a different explanation ; therefore physiologists, by a 

 very natural transition of thought, were led to suppose that the presence of 

 semen in the vagina alone was sufficient to account for impregnation :" and he 

 immediately proceeds to his experiments. In fact I know this to be his opinion, 

 because in a MS. of his lectures which is full and accurate from having taken 

 my notes in Latin, I find it said of Haller for believing that the semen always 

 enters the uterus, " Now it is surprising that a man like Haller should do so, 

 who, from his works would seem to form his opinions in general, on sound rea- 

 soning :" and Ruysch's cases arc quite ridiculed because this anatomist, " being 

 now of an age when most other people can see but little, set about looking for 

 something wonderful, and discovered what nobody had ever seen before, viz. 

 semen in the uterus and Fallopian tubes." 



■f In the body of a young woman, eighteen years pf age, who had been brought 

 ip in a convent and had every appearance of being a virgin, Valisneri found 

 ive or six vesicles protruding in one ovarium, and the correspondiug Fallopian 

 ube redder and longer than usual, as he had frequently observed in animals 

 luring heat. Bonnet gives the history of a young lady who died furiously in 

 ove with a man of low rank, and whose ovaria were turgid with vesiebs of 



2b 



