282 EXTRACTS AND ABSTRACTS FROM FOREIGN JOURNALS. 



They were much waved and contorted towards their deep and doubtless 

 closed extremity ; and at various parts they appeared to be implanted at 

 some depth in the tissue of the uterus. Whether any of them divided 

 into branches I could not determine. In a specimen belonging to Dr. 

 John Reid, the uterus contained an early ovum, considered as dat- 

 ing little more than fifteen days after conception. The decidua vera 

 was somewhat corrugated on the surface. It had the usual cribriform 

 aspect, arid the pits were for the most part wider than in the earlier 

 examples ; but the smaller orifices still presented the character of the 

 tubular glands, and others showed an obvious transition between these 

 and the larger ones. On making a section parallel with the surface, it 

 appeared that may of the pits had a comparatively wide cavity, with a 

 narrow orifice. From these and other observations of a similar kind, I 

 was led to conclude that the apertures on the decidua which gave to 

 that membrane its well known cribriform character, however much they 

 may be modified in the latter stages of pregnancy, are originally no- 

 thing else than the openings of the glands of the lining membrane of 

 the uterus ; and that, as in the bitch, the mucous membrane is really 

 converted into the decidua, and discharged from the uterus at parturi- 

 tion, an opinion, it may be remarked, adopted on other grounds by 

 various continental physiologists. In a uterus supposed to have been 

 recently impregnated, and in which the vessels had been minutely in- 

 jected with vermilion, the lining membrane or commencing decidua 

 appeared everywhere pervaded by a network of blood-vessels, in the 

 midst of which the tubular glands were seen, their white epithelium 

 strongly contrasting with the surrounding redness. In more advanced 

 stages the veins of the decidua form large ramifying canals in the sub- 

 stance of the membrane, which freely communicate with the uterine 

 veins. On inflating these venous canals of the decidua with a blow- 

 pipe, the air will frequently pass out at the openings on the surface of 

 the membrane which we have considered as the orifices of the enlarged 

 uterine glands, and it might hence be concluded that there is a natural 

 communication between the two. I am nevertheless disposed to think, 

 that the venous canals and glandular recesses form two separate systems 

 of cavities within the decidua, divided from each other by very thin 

 parietes, which are easily ruptured. 1 am inclined to adopt this opi- 

 nion, in consequence of repeated examination, in various ways, of the 

 structure in question, (though I must admit that the result has not 

 been always favourable,) and also from considering that the pits in the 

 decidua appear, as already stated, to be merely the enlarged uterine 

 glands, which, when observed in earlier stages, seem to have the same 

 relation to the surrounding blood-vessels of the decidua as is known to 

 subsist between glands and blood-vessels in general. 



An objection to the opinion, that the decidua is merely the altered 

 mucous membrane of the uterus, which will naturnlly occur, is the dif- 

 ficulty of accounting on that view for the investment of the ovum by 

 the decidua reflexa, which is continuous with the uterine decidua, and 

 is believed by most, though not by all physiologists, to have a similar 

 origin. At the same time, the force of this objection is lessened by the 

 fact, that the decidua reflexa, though continuous with the vera, does 



