ABORTION. 235 



one hundred and fifty products that had not gone beyond the term 

 of three months; now I can assert that of this number at least one 

 half were diseased. 



604. Sometimes the disease commences in the membranes; the 

 chorion thickens, becomes opaque, and is covered with rugosities 

 on its internal surface; the granulations on its external surface 

 swell, and give birth to hydatids-in-bunches in the womb, and to 

 the hydatiform mole, which Madame Boivin erroneously regards as 

 a dependency on the amnios, &c.; the latter undergoes alterations 

 that are nearly similar, is disorganised, or contracts adhesions with 

 the surrounding parts; the placenta is not formed, or is irregularly 

 developed, is transformed into hydatic granulations, and becomes the 

 seat of all sorts of degenerations. 



Sometimes, and perhaps most frequently, the disease attacks the 

 umbilical vesicle or its duct; in others it affects the cord or the em- 

 bryo itself, and in this respect the forms and degrees of the altera- 

 tions are exceedingly various. 



605. Almost all the diseases to which the child is liable after 

 birth, may manifest themselves during its intra-uterine life. In an 

 embryo of two months I have seen adhesion of the whole length of 

 the members to the trunk, I have seen ulcerous destruction of the 

 head, belly, hand, &c. in subjects quite as young as the above- 

 mentioned; also, manifest alterations in the lungs, the liver, the peri- 

 toneum, and other parts of the body as early as the third month; I 

 have found the umbilical cord in a state of atrophy, and its vessels 

 either quite or almost obliterated, at every stage of its development. 

 In several specimens the umbilical vesicle was hard, and as it were, 

 stony; in others it was full of a clear limpid fluid, and in two cases 

 it was not of a natural size, nor had it the other appearances that 

 naturally belong to it. In some embryos the head alone was atro- 

 phied and deformed; in others the same state was observed in one 

 or more of the limbs, the breast or the belly; most commonly, the 

 atrophy, or the disorganisation is general, and in some cases the 

 embryo at last wholly disappears. In such instances the amnios is 

 most commonly destroyed also; I have many times found the ovum a 

 mere sac, filled with an albuminous, limpid and viscid fluid; I could 

 almost believe with Walter, Burns, Beclard, and M, Diiges that 

 such ova, composed merely of the caduca and chorion, had never 

 contained an embryo; that they might be compared to those eggs 

 without germs, that are laid by pullets, that have never been fecun- 

 dated by the cock; but as in several of them there were still to be 

 found the traces of an amnios, an umbilical cord, or of the foslus 

 itself, it was necessary to renounce such an idea at once. 



