OF TRUE PREGNANCY. 135 



terior of the womb or of the tube doubtless suits it better; but are 

 we allowed on that account to say that it can never take root in any 

 other situation? Therefore nothing in the laws of the organism for- 

 bids us to admit the possibility of a peritoneal pregnancy, and I 

 should not have taken the trouble to combat the opposite opinion, 

 were it not that M. Dubois still maintains it, and throws around it 

 all the weight of his imposing authority. 



351. The fecundated vesicle, soon covered with a velvety pile 

 similar to the spongioles of the roots of plants, must rapidly contract 

 adhesions with the surfaces on which it rests; there is an afflux of 

 fluids to that point, appearances similar to those of a local and very 

 circumscribed inflammation soon occur, and an accidental sac is 

 soon organised around the little ovum, which is, so to speak, thence- 

 forth protected against the action of the surrounding organs. 



§. III. ©f Tubal Preg^nancy. 



352. Tubal pregnancy, more common than any of the others, 

 and the only one that has not been contested by the partisans of 

 ovarian fecundation, could only be rejected by authors who believe 

 that vivification takes place in the womb; but the cases on record 

 are now so numerous that it is no longer permissible to entertain 

 the slightest doubt in relation to it. Without mentioning those that 

 are detailed in the works of Bartholin, of Riolan, of Bianchi and 

 others; in the dissertations of MM. Bry, de Bouillon, Bonis; of those 

 related in the Revue Medicate (1826) the Nuovo Giorn. del Lett. Ital. 

 (1825,) of another reported by M. Vallerand, Nouv. Bihl. Med. 

 (1826,) and of an infinitude of others that have been published in the 

 French and Foreign Scientific Collections, I will state that in 1816 

 I saw in the body of a woman who died at the hospital of Tours, a 

 very perfect ovum in the second month of its growth, which was 

 very completely enclosed in the outer half of the Fallopian tube, 

 of which the root, the fimbriated extremity, the canal, and all the 

 other parts were still easy to be recognised. Any one may see, in 

 the Museum of the Ecole de Medecine, a wax model which mathe- 

 matically demonstrates the same thing. We may conceive, further, 

 that in this species of pregnancy, the product of fecundation may 

 attach itself to any portion of the length of the tube, but that it will 

 most frequently stop in the trumpet part of it, and that after a cer- 

 tain lapse of time, it must be difiicult to decide, at a glance, whether 

 the pregnancy is tubal, rather than abdominal or ovarian. It may 

 besides be conceived, that the uterine duct, soon distended, and 

 thinned, might burst, and transform a tubal into a peritoneal preg- 

 nancy; so that the latter may, in fact, be either primitive or essen- 



