no OF TRUE PREGNANCY. 



amniotic fluid, the muscular coat of the womb is indeed very thin, 

 and sometimes reduced to one lialf, a third, and even a quarter of 

 its natural thickness. 



Others might have been induced to defend a diametrically oppo- 

 site sentiment, because during the first eight days after parturition, 

 a period in which more childbed women die than in any other, the 

 parietes of the womb, in contracting, really thicken so much as to be 

 an inch, or even fifteen lines through, at the fundus. But, since nu- 

 merous opportunities have been enjoyed of interrogating nature in 

 a better way, hypotheses founded on false analogies or on excep- 

 tionable or badly explained cases, have given way before the truth. 



278. It is now known that the womb preserves nearly the same 

 thickness during the whole course of pregnancy as it had when un- 

 impregnated; (I say nearly, for sometimes it is a line or two thicker 

 or thinner:) that this thickness, always greatest at the insertion of 

 the placenta, generally diminishes from the fundus towards the cer- 

 vix, where it is frequently found to be not more than two or three 

 lines, or even less; that it increases a little in all parts of the organ 

 at the same time, until the third or fourth month, and then remains 

 rather below its primitive limits, except the cervix, which at that 

 period, especially, grows thinner, to exceed them again in the 

 last stages of pregnancy. It is, therefore, useless to argue against 

 the opinion of Jenty, who maintains that this thickness is much more 

 apparent than real, and that it is solely owing to the accumulation 

 of blood in the uterine vessels. 



279. Structure. In its unimpregnated state, the organisation of 

 the womb seems to be only incipient; it is perfected, or developed, in 

 pregnancy (169); its fibres which were pale, dense, and inextrica- 

 bly tangled, soften, become redder, and soon represent layers and 

 bundles easy to detect and to follow. The cellular tissue which 

 was before so firm, dense, and elastic, relaxes, becomes supple, 

 and indeed resembles the common cellular tela, and in this way 

 permits the other elements, which it held in bondage as it were, to 

 follow the impulse that animates the whole womb. The arterial 

 branches folded upon each other a thousand times, like the vas de- 

 ferens, and bridled in this condition by dense, elastic laminae, cede 

 to the general relaxation, and gradually become lengthened; their 

 angles, at first so sharp, with their doublings, grow blunter, enlarge, 

 and at last exhibit only certain zigzags of greater or less depth, 

 tortuosities which do not impede the circulation, and their calibre, 

 before the end of gestation, comes to be double, triple, and even 

 quadruple its diameter previous to fecundation. 



280. The veins undergo tlie same metamorphoses: already, in the 



