OF TRUE PREGNANCY. 125 



crease the calorification of that part, indeed, do not all the irritative 

 affections produce the same result? Is not the heat of the cervix 

 various in different women, and even in the same woman at every 

 moment of the day, of the week, or month, or year? Must it not 

 present innumerable shades, according to the heat peculiar to each 

 practitioner's finger, and also according to the necessarily varying 

 temperature of the same practitioner's hand? 



327. Hippocrates and the ancient physiologists taught that the va- 

 ginal orifice of the womb closes immediately after fecundation, so as 

 to prevent the escape of the semen; Mauriceau and other accoucheurs 

 have remarked, further, that the cervix becomes sharper than it was 

 in the course of the two months preceding fecundation; that it as- 

 sumes the form of a cone with its base turned upwards. These 

 changes, ii is true, take place in some women, but they so often fail 

 in those who have never borne children, and are so fugacious, so 

 difficult in common to recognise, so slightly marked after a first 

 pregnancy, that it is almost impossible to derive any a^lvantage from 

 them. 



328. Stein affirms that in the first two months, the posterior lip, 

 naturally the shortest, becomes the longest, and at length reaches the 

 same level with the anterior one; that the slit in the os tincae is trans- 

 formed into an opening more or less regularly rounded and circular; 

 that the pubic face of the lower segment of the womb gives birth to 

 a soft and more or less projecting tumor; and that these changes 

 most commonly suffice to prove that the woman is with child. But 

 it is so common to meet with a circular form of the lower orifice of 

 the womb in women who are not pregnant and who have borne 

 several children, and even in young virgins to see the posterior lip 

 as long or even longer than the other, either absolutely or only in 

 appearance, that the assertions of Stein do not really deserve a se- 

 rious refutation. 



329. I cannot, however, refrain from mentioning a peculiarity 

 which perhaps imposed itself upon him as that anterior projection 

 which is vaguely treated of in the French translation of his work. 

 It has happened to me several times, and I have pointed it out to a 

 number of my pupils, to find, in women who had been already 

 touched by a good many persons, that the anterior lip was sensibly 

 longer and softer than at the commencement of our practical sittings; 

 examining this lip with care, it was then easy to feel a real crepitation, 

 and to find that it was swelled, and fungus-like; but this was a state 

 wholly foreign to gestation, and which was produced solely by the 

 frequen'tly repeated touchings to which we had subjected the woman. 

 At other times, we feel aboye the vagina, immediately in front of the 



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