108 OF TRUE PREGNANCY. 



burthenod as it were with the weight of the ovum, seems to sink or 

 lo be somewhat crushed downwards; which compels it to enlarge 

 proportionably in the transverse and in the antero-posterior diame- 

 ters, which until then it had not done. 



274. Direction. While the womb remains unconstrained in the 

 excavation, and its fundus is not arrested by the base of the sacrum, 

 its posterior half, forming a larger mass than its anterior half, tends 

 to make it turn over backwards, so that as the os tincae sinks down- 

 wards, it inclines forwards, sometimes more, sometimes less, and 

 gets farther from the sacrum, and nearer to the pubis; a deviation 

 that is favored by the alternate fulness and emptiness of the urinary 

 bladder. Imperfectly supported in front by the abdominal parietes 

 pressed upon through the medium of the viscera by the diaphragm, 

 and particularly as the woman in order to maintain her equilibrium 

 is obliged to carry her head and shoulders somewhat backwards, the 

 womb, as soon as it is sufficiently enlarged to touch the promontory, 

 can no longer rise except in the line of the axis of the superior strait. 

 Applied posteriorly against a solid, salient and rounded part, it with 

 difficulty preserves its station on the median line, as it proceeds up- 

 wards into the abdomen, almost always deviates to one side or the 

 other, to the right eight times out of ten, so that one of its sides, the 

 left, if the inclination is to the right, and the right if it is inclined to 

 the left, soon turns forwards; whence it happens, thai its anterior 

 region looks a little to the right in the former instance, and to the 

 left in the latter; in a word, the womb seems to hai'e turned on its 

 great axis. 



275. The inclination of the womb to the righc rather than to the 

 left, has been explained in a hundred different ways. The presence 

 of the rectum, habitually filled, in pregnant women with hard ster- 

 coraceous matter, has appeared to some persons sufficient to account 

 for it; but the right lateral obliquity is to be met with also in per- 

 sons, 'who are not of a costive habit, and even in individuals laboring 

 under diarrhoea. M. Desormeaux adds, that while rising into the 

 abdomen, the organ of gestation is thrust to the right by the mass of 

 small intestines, and the sigmoid flexure of the colon; which de- 

 pends, says he, on this, that the mesentery, fixed on the front of the 

 spine, descends obliquely from right to left. But there is an error 

 as to the fact here, for the mesentery is directed from left to right; 

 and I am astonished that M. Desormeaux, in general so correct, 

 should have overlooked it; besides, though the sigmoid flexure of 

 the colon is on the left, the caecum, which is still larger, is on the 

 right. Others have thought with Levret, that the insertion of the 

 placenta, by restricting the dilatation of one particular portion of 



