NOURISHMENT OF THE FGETUS. 215 



child's stomach is always filled with a lacteous matter; that there 

 are excrements in its buvvels; that immediately after birth, or pre- 

 viously to sucking, it frequently vomits a whitish fluid; that it sucks 

 a finger if put into its mouth, even while still within the sexual or- 

 gans; and that its stomach would not be able to perform its diges- 

 tive function immediately after parturition, if it were not previously 

 accustomed to it. If asked whence the foetus derives this nourish- 

 ment, he answers that it is at first from the seminal fluid, and sub- 

 sequently from the lacteous juice contained in the amnios. 



Haller, Darwin, &c., add to the reasons of Diemerbroeck and 

 La Courvee, that the amniotic liquid has been found in the stomachs 

 of many foetuses; that in a pregnant cow that had been frozen, Heister 

 found the mouth, oesophagus and stomach of the foetus filled with an 

 icicle which was continuous with the waters; that many observers have 

 met with silky hairs in the meconium, and they conclude that all these 

 matters could not have got into tlie digestive passages by any other 

 means than deglutition. 



More recently, this opinion has been strengthened by the case of 

 a foBtus in which the bowel was completely divided near the caecum 

 and contained meconium in the portion connected with the stomach, 

 wliile the larger intestine was almost completely obliterated; by an- 

 other case mentioned by M. Dubois, in which the alimentary canai 

 being contracted near the pylorus, contained meconium only in the 

 part above tlie contraction; and lastly, by the fact that Beclard 

 having colored the liquor amnii with ink, in a bitch that he ex- 

 perimented on, found some of it in the oesophagus and stomach of 

 the young. 



554. None of these proofs are conclusive; most of them do not 

 even deserve to be seriously combated. The presence of hairs ia 

 the intestines, might, in fact, be explained in another way; but the 

 cases of that kind that have been reported are far from authentic. 

 To the facts noticed by MM. Desgranges and Dubois, may be op- 

 posed one published by M. Piet, and in which the intestine, though 

 separated from the stomach, is said to have been, nevertheless, filled 

 with meconium. I have myself dissected a foetus, at full term, whose 

 cesophagus upon reaching the diaphragm ended in a completely im- 

 pervious blind sac, notwithstanding which its colon was full of me- 

 conium. While enclosed in the membranes, the mouth of the foetus 

 is closely shut, at least until a pretty advanced stage of pregnancy: 

 to swallow, either by suction or deglutition, it should be able to per- 

 form the motions of inspiration and expiration, of elevation and de- 

 pression of the larynx. Acephalous and astomatous foetuses, and those 

 which come into the world with all the openings of the mucous 



