rot. XXVI.3 PITTLOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 5t3 



by the placenta, which was doubtless fixed in the tube, and the pedunculus re- 

 maining entire, would easily extend from thence to the foetus. 



Riolan, jun. Anthropog. Nov. lib. 2, c. 34, was the first that publicly ob- 

 served these strange conceptions ; and he tells us, that they have the same coats, 

 secundine, &c. as the foetuses engendered within the womb. And considering 

 the late anatomical discoveries, and new hypothesis of the genital parts in 

 women, and their uses in generation, made by Kirkringius, de Graaf, and 

 others, it seems more than probable, that such conceptions happen when in 

 coition one of the ova descends into the tube ; and being unable to pass into 

 the uterus through the lower orifice (which is sometimes, and in aged people 

 always, contracted) and being however impregnated by the aura seminalis, or 

 animalcula, with which the testes and seminal parts of some males, according 

 to Leuwenhoeck, do so prodigiously abound ; it there grows till too large to be 

 contained, and then breaks forth into the belly : though sometimes they con- 

 tinue in the tube itself. There the placenta fixes, and draws nourishment, as 

 from the fundus uteri ; and if the pedunculus hold together, conveys it to the 

 foetus in the same manner as those in the womb. 



Such extra-uterine embryos have been sometimes found in women ; but not 

 publicly taken notice of, till the beginning of the last century, by Riolan the 

 younger, with this remark : viz. the Fallopian tubes appear, says he, of the 

 same nature and substance as the uterus, quia carnosa est, in qua, quod est 

 mirabile, foetum humanum concipi fuit observatum; and then he gives an 

 account of four such strange conceptions, which occurred to him. 



Since that time, more marvellous cases have happened in that country ; two 

 of them much amused the curious every where. One was found at Paris, 

 January 1669, by Mr. B. Vassal, in the right tube of a woman. It was 4 

 months old, and so grown, and the tube so distended, as made him mistake it 

 for another womb, and accordingly to call the account he published thereof. 

 Demonstration d'une double Matrice. See Phil. Trans. N° 48 :* also the 

 Memoirs of the Nat. Curios. Vol. I. Obs. 110. But the mystery seemed not 

 to be understood, until de GraafFtook it right, and made use of this very ob- 

 servation to illustrate and confirm the hypothesis of Kirkringius. And soon 

 after Elsholtius, a learned German, did the same in his tract, De Conceptione 

 Tubaria, qua humani foetus extra uteri cavitatem in tubis quandoque concipi- 

 untur. He recites the story as from Mr. Vaisal, and gives the figure of the 

 supposed two wombs and the foetus in the distended tube ; and among other 



♦ Vol. I. p. 358, of these Abridgments. 

 3x2 



