OF TRUE PREGNANCY. 107 



as she has already had several children. In the former case, this 

 ring scarcely exists; a circle that grows thinner and thinner, and 

 sometimes quite sharp at its edge, is ordinarily substituted for it; 

 in the second, it pretty often retains a thickness of two, three, or 

 four lines, until labor comes on. Its orifice remains habitually 

 closed; its lips are smooth, even and thin, even to the last, in those 

 who have never borne children; in others it gapes a little at an early 

 period; I have in many cases been able to introduce the end of my 

 finger into it, in women who were five and a half or six months 

 gone, and who were used for the purposes of the practical lessons 

 of my lying-in-room. Wider and softer below, it is then found to 

 be harder and narrower above; its cavity resembles a pretty long 

 finger of a glove, so that we can touch the naked membranes, and 

 ascertain the position of the child several months before the end of 

 pregnancy. 



272. Position. At the same time that the length and volume of 

 the womb are increasing, it undergoes other changes, both of its 

 posture and relations to other parts; the cervix is depressed, and 

 appro£>ches nearer to the vulva: this phenomenon, which is very de- 

 cided in some women, and scarcely appreciable in others, is most 

 frequently met with, and is observable for a longer time in women 

 who have t\ie pelvis large, and who are of a soft or naturally lax fibre; 

 and less commonly in those of an opposite constitution, although it 

 is not a rare thing to find it in young and robust women, even in a 

 first pregnancy; but the os tincse does not fail to rise up by degrees; 

 at three months, \\ is about at the same place it occupied before im- 

 pregnation; after this, continuing gradually to rise, it sometimes 

 gets as high as the s^cro-vertebral angle, while, on the contrary, it 

 begins in other instances to descend again, at about the sixth, the 

 seventh or eighth month> and approaches pretty near the inferior 

 strait. 



273. The fundus, which at the third month is not higher than 

 the level of the superior strait, rises two finger breadths above it in 

 the course of the fourth, approaches to the navel in the fifth, gets on 

 a level with that central point, or even above it, at the end of the 

 sixth, still goes upwards in the seventh and eighth, but never reaches 

 either the diaphragm or liver, nor does it ever fill up the epigastric 

 region, as has been hyperbolically or thoughtlessly stated by some 

 of the standard authors. I have observed that it often remains in 

 the meso-gastric region until labor takes place. Besides, with some 

 exceptions, it can scarcely happen otherwise, for in the last months 

 of pregnancy, the centre of the pelvis is often from fifteen to 

 eighteen inches distant from the navel. However, the womb, being 



