236 THE FCETUS. 



606. I have, besides, certain proof that most of the cases of mon- 

 strosity, even those which in our times are so complacently ac- 

 counted for on the theory of an arrest in the process of evolution, 

 are nothing more than the results of disease in some part of the 

 ovum; but I reserve the development of these assertions for another 

 work; let it suffice to remark in this place, that the human embryo, 

 a mere vegetable during the first months of pregnancy, is surrounded 

 with too many causes of destruction to be able always to resist them 

 successfully; that nothing ought to be more easy to ascertain than 

 the disease and even the death of a being whose existence is so frail 

 and precarious; and finally, whenever the ovum is diseased to such 

 an extent as to cause the death of the embryo, abortion is in some 

 measure one of its necessary consequences. 



607. I will not, with Madame Lachapelle, say, that after the death 

 of the foetus, the womb becomes the seat of a congestion, because 

 the blood, which previously passed into the placenta, surcharges it 

 by stagnating in its vessels; nor that this embarrassment, definitely, 

 is the cause of abortion. Such a supposition does not appear to me 

 to be tenable, and I should not have alluded to it, had not M. De- 

 sormeaux seemed to lend it a new force by the strength of his au- 

 thority. As soon as the ovum ceases to live, it becomes only a 

 foreign body in the uterus; thenceforth the organism tends to 

 throw it off", as it does whatever interferes with its operations, as a 

 thorn for example, but not because the blood primarily destined 

 for the foetus is compelled to re-enter the torrent of the maternal 

 circulation. 



601. Weakness of the foetus, its convulsive motions, the super- 

 abundance, or too small quantity of the liquor amnii, circumvolu- 

 tions of the cord around its neck, &c., knots in it, its shortness, its 

 excessive length, cysts, or any accumulations of fluids between the 

 membranes, effusions of various kinds, whether diffuse or circum- 

 scribed, in the substance of the placenta or caduca, are also causes 

 capable of bringing on abortion, but not inevitably, like the affec- 

 tions I spoke of just now. 



609. Occasional causes. The predisposing causes alone would 

 very rarely fail to bring on the expulsion of the ovum; they in fact 

 frequently do produce it, and in these cases the abortion is said to 

 be spontaneous; however, it is almost always attributed to some 

 accident, some particular circumstance, which, in the eyes of the 

 public, and even of many physicians, passes as the only and principal 

 cause of it. The generality of people being unable to conceive, and 

 professional people having scarcely imagined that the principle of 

 abortion might reside in the ovum itself, it has followed that a thou- 



