468 



yond the moment of birth. This foetus was evidently contemporary with 

 the boy to whose body it was attached. Similar to the product of extra 

 nterine conceptions, it received its nourishment from that which may be 

 considered as its brother, and whose germ had originally inclosed its own. 

 During the thirteen years of the life of Bissieu, (this was the name of 

 the subject of this singular case) the organized mass obtained from the 

 mesocolon, by means 6f vessels of its own, the blood necessary for its ex- 

 istence; this blood, propelled by the organs of circulation into the body 

 of the foetus, returned afterwards to the mesocolon of the boy who had 

 so long been to him as a mother. /ft last, the period fixed by Nature for 

 expulsion beig arrived, and this expulsion being impracticable, the Cyst 

 became inflamed ; the inflammation extended to the intestine, the part 

 which separated these two cavities was destroyed, and the cyst opened 

 into the colon 5 pus and hair were voided by stool, and the patient died 

 of marasmus. The drawings of different parts of the body of this foetus, 

 taken by M. Cuvier and M. Jadelot, render this interesting case most 

 complete. They will be published in the first volume of the transactions 

 of the Academical Society, near the Faculty of Medicine at Paris*. 



We ought not to be ready to place implicit confidence in the extraor- 

 dinary stories contained in the older, writers, and even in some of the 

 moderns. In reading the periodical publications of the seventeenth, and 

 even of the eighteenth century, one is apt to wonder at the marvellous 

 things which they contain. Among other strange cases, is that of a girl 

 that was born with a pig's head ; another of a woman who was deliver- 

 ed of an animal, in every respect, like a pike. There was a time, says 

 a philosopher, when philosophy consisted merely in seeing prodigies in 

 nature. 



CCXIV. Of the coverings of the foetus. The name of after-birth is 

 given to the envelopes of the fcetus, because they are not expelled from 

 the uterus, till after the birth of the child. The ovoid sac, which con- 

 tains the foetus, is formed by two membranes in contact with each other. 

 The name of chorion is given to that which, by its external and shaggy 

 surface, adheres to the inside of the uterus, the other, a concentric mem- 

 brane to the former, but of less thickness, and to be considered as the se- 

 cretory organ of the fluid which fills the ovum, is called the amnion. 

 The third envelope, admitted by Hunter, and called by that physiologist, 

 the membrana decidua, is nothing more than the languinous tissue pre- 

 sented by the external part of the chorion, after tearing the multitude of 

 cellular and vascular filaments, by means of which the ovum adheres to 

 the uterus. The placenta is itself merely a thicker portion of nearly the 

 same tissue, in which the umbilical vessels are ramified. The uterus is 

 also thicker at the part which corresponds to the placenta, because 

 it is there that the communication of the fcetus with the mother is estab- 

 lished*. 



* Mr. Young of London, has communicated a case of the same kind, in a valuable 

 paper inserted in the first volume of the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions. In Mr. 

 Young's case, the foetus was contained in a cyst that seemed to answer the purpose of 

 membranes and placenta ; it was without a brain, but had imperfectly formed digestive 

 organs and external organs of generation. See vol. 1st of the Medico "Chirurgical Trans- 

 actions Trans. 



f The membrana decidua, a perfect epichorion, as it has been culled by M. CIIAFSIKU, 

 is the result of the generative orgnsm. It is formed on tiie internal surface of the uterus 



