were shapeless. The relatively differentiated genital 

 organs could not yet be distinguished between ovary or 

 testis. The external genital organ was large, with a 

 fissure at its base where the urinary canal flows. 



In case 12, a five-week-old embryonic veiscle with 

 very voluminous amnion, the embryo was invisible. Possibly, 

 here there was a lack of conformity in the degree of 

 development of embryo and its membranes, examples of which 

 Baer had found earlier. For illustration, he presented 

 the following case. A woman who had given birth several 

 times was inclined to spontaneous abortion. At the time 

 of her pregnancy she was subjected to a nervous convulsion, 

 after which she became ill. She was afraid of abortion. 

 Although abortion did not take place, the abdomen from that 

 time increased very little. Forty days before the time 

 of parturition the birth pains began and she gave birth to 

 a fetus very small for the duration of gestation. During 

 the dissection of the fetal ovum, it was found that all 

 ovum membranes were very thick, and the placenta reached 

 in thickness three inches. The embryo itself was flabby, 

 and its size and degree of development corresponded to the 

 age of nine to ten weeks. It was clear that in this case 

 the embryo died after the several mental suffering of the 

 mother, but the membranes continued to develop. 



The described observations were accompanied by many 

 general notes. First Baer noticed that only five of the 

 former cases in his illustrations (1, 2, 7, 10 and 12) 

 represented normal features, and the others to some extent 

 were anomalies (especially 4, 5, 6 and 9) . The relation 

 of the dimensions of the embryonic vesicle to the size of 

 embryo varied strongly. For example, in case 5 a relatively 

 large vesicle developed in which the embryo was hardly 

 recognized. There are known cases of detection of embryonic 

 vesicles without embryos which, in Baer's opinion, showed a 

 fixed degree of independence in the development of the 

 embryonic membranes. The embryo can grow sickly and even 

 die, but the life of the membranes is not disturbed; Baer 

 frequently noticed these phenomena in other mammals, in 

 particular in swine in which there are cases of suffocation 

 of certain foeti by thread-like processes from the yolk sac. 

 The embryos during this are underdeveloped, their sizes 



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