ABORTION. 233 



the broad or round ligaments, or of the tubes or ovaries to the sur- 

 rounding parts, or to each other; chronic metritis and all its con- 

 sequences; anteversion and retroversion; scirrhus and cancer; trans- 

 formations and afTections of whatsoever nature; in fine, whatever 

 may interfere with the easy and regular enlargement of the womb 

 during pregnancy. 



600. This genus of causes, formerly noticed by several authors, 

 amongst others by M. Delpech, has lately been well discussed by 

 Madame Boivin in a memoir ad hoc, which in fact deserves the at- 

 tention of every accoucheur; its mechanism and frequency may be 

 easily conceived of by reflecting on the affections that take place 

 in a multitude of women at the period of puberty, before or after 

 the occurrence of that revolution, and indeed at all periods of their 

 lives; afTeclions that are most generally occasioned by a material 

 lesion of some portion of the generative system; and do not com- 

 monly disappear without leaving behind them the indelible traces of 

 their existence. Sometimes it is a tumor in the excavation that 

 prevents the enlargement of the uterus; at others it is an ovary that 

 has degenerated or been transformed into a cyst, and become lodged 

 in the recto-vaginal fossa, a case of which came under my own no- 

 tice; sometimes the right tube is glued to the ligament of the left 

 ovary, and vice versa, and even, besides, so as to adhere behind the 

 cervix, of which I saw an instance in a woman who died when about 

 three months gone with child; more frequently, there are encepha- 

 loid and scirrhus masses, either occasioned by the pregnancy, or 

 whose germs existed previously to the conception, which, by affecting 

 the ovaries, the tubes, the pelvic peritoneum, or the substance itself 

 of the womb, oppose an invincible obstacle to the changes of structure 

 and dimensions indispensable in these organs for the completion of 

 gestation, of which I have collected pretty numerous examples, &c. 



601. Leucorrhcea, hydrometry, irritability; too great a degree of 

 contractility; rigidity of the fibres and even of the vessels, and if we 

 may believe Hauenschild and Loder, of the peritoneum of the uterus; 

 and a laxity or atony of its neck, (on which M. Desormeaux rationally 

 insists,) are also admitted among the number of the predisposing 

 causes of abortion; but for the most part their action is far from 

 being so evident as the preceding. The same may be said of a want 

 of extensibility of the uterus, occasioned by a too great firmness of 

 its fibres, a firmness on which many authors lay so much stress. 

 According to their statements, abortion is to be feared because the 

 womb does not yield with facility to the effort which tends to dis- 

 tend it. In this respect their language, always similar to that of 

 the ancients, who supposed that the ovum acted mechanically upon 



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