OF THE SEXUAL ORGANS. 61 



certain plaits or lines, which have been carefully studied of late by 

 Madame Boivin. This is a sort of gathering, which seems to be only 

 a continuation of that which is found in the womb itself, but much 

 more developed. The median crest, the largest of all, more salient 

 in the middle, than at either end, is formed, as it were, by the approxi- 

 mation of many small secondary folds crowded together. The trans- 

 verse lines are all oblique from above downwards, and from the 

 sides, inwards, towards the preceding line, on which they terminate, 

 like the barbs of a feather, on their stem. Slightly concave upwards 

 they leave pretty deep grooves between each other, in which a good 

 many mucous follicles are to be found, and occasionally, some small 

 round transparent vesicles, a sort of hydatids, formerly regarded as 

 germs, and for a long time known as the eggs of Naboth. More 

 deeply seated, that is, beneath this network, which constitutes what 

 is called the arbor vitae, there is another one, somewhat differently 

 disposed, but which cannot be examined until we come to speak of 

 the structure of the organ. At the place where the two walls of 

 the neck unite, and where the transverse lines too are confounded, 

 are also seen two longitudinal lines. 



160. The superior opening of the neck having been above indi- 

 cated as the uterine orifice, it is useless to return again to the consi- 

 deration of it. The inferior orifice divides the lips of the os tincae 

 from each other; and as it opens into the vagina, it may very pro- 

 perly be called the vaginal orifice of the womb. From what has 

 been said, and which ought to be understood of the cervix of a young 

 woman, previously to being fecundated, it is evident that the inferior 

 angle of the uterus ought to be quite acute, that a little higher up 

 the size of the neck should be greater, and that this part ought to 

 be again contracted, and, as it were, strangulated at the place where 

 it unites with the body of the organ. 



C. Dimensions of the Womh. 



161. In women who have never had children, the womb, measured 

 from the most salient point of the fundus to the end of the anterior 

 lip of the neck, I have found to be of an average length of from 

 twenty-six to twenty eight lines; from one fallopian tube to the other, 

 from seventeen to twenty lines; from front to rear, in the thickest 

 part, nine to eleven lines; at the neck I have found that there were, 

 transversely, ten to twelve lines, five or six lines from front to rear, 

 eight or ten lines across at ihe place where it is strangulated, and 

 that there were four lines of thickness at the same point. The pa- 

 rieles of the womb are four lines in thickness at the body, and two 

 or three at the neck; the lips project two or three lines into the 

 vagina, and the slit that separates them is of about the same extent. 



