76 OF THE SEXUAL ORGANS. 



cult to separate its different tissues. From birth to puberty the 

 genital organs of the young girl undergo no special change; nothing 

 in them discloses the great part they are destined at some period to 

 play in the economy, and they merely follow in their evolution the 

 progress of that of the constitution. At the age of from twelve to 

 eighteen years, they awake from their long stupor. The womb 

 rapidly attains to double the size it had previously acquired, both in 

 breadth and thickness; the base of the wedge, which it resembles, 

 instead of remaining low down, rises higher up, and thenceforth the 

 woman commences a new aera. Although not so marked, yet the 

 changes that take place in the ovaries and Fallopian tubes are not the 

 less undeniable. 



As long as a woman has had no children, the genital organs re- 

 main in this state; after one or more pregnancies, the ovaria become 

 covered with protuberances, wrinkles or cicatrices, and they still 

 increase a little in size. The tubes, almost strangers to the great 

 revolution operated in the general system, scarcely differ from their 

 condition previously to the first pregnancy, or from what they will 

 be at a ripe age, unless affected by diseases, of which they often be- 

 come the seat; the form and proportions of the uterus remain unal- 

 tered, only it continues of a rather increased size. The vagina be- 

 comes shorter and wider, while the strength of the round ligaments 

 is more or less augmented. In old age the ovaria are atrophied, 

 become elongated, and of a very irregular shape; the womb tends 

 again back to its original size; the cavity of its body becomes so con- 

 tracted, that the stricture which connects it with the neck is some- 

 times found to close it completely up, as has been very judiciously 

 indicated by M. Mayer. 



§. IX. Anomalies. 



194. The anomalous conditions of the sexual apparatus, which 

 are as numerous as they are diversified, all seem to depend upon a 

 want, an arrest, or an aberration of development, or on a disease 

 occurring anteriorly or posteriorly to the period of birth. 



195. No authentic case exists of a complete and simultaneous 

 absence of all the internal female organs of generation; but Chaus- 

 sier, Madame Boivin, M. Duges and Cassan, have made mention of 

 a person who had only one ovary, one tube, and so to speak, only 

 one half the uterus. The absence of the ovana has been ascertained, 

 in more than one instance, although the other parts of generation 

 were in a natural state: only one was absent in the case mentioned 

 by M. Jadelot. M. Renauldin has seen them reduced to the smallest 

 possible size in a woman about forty years of age; the Graafian vest- 



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