DURING MENSTRUATION. 
59 
filtrated with blood. 4thly5 and lastly, there was the cavity to which I have before 
alluded. 
When the ovaries had become firm and hard by the coagulating action of the 
spirit, sections were made into them at various parts; by which means a number of 
yellow bodies (false corpora lutea) in different stages of degeneration were brought 
into view. Some of these bodies were rather large, and one of thetn contained a well- 
defined clot, the summit of which communicated with a cicatrix on the surface of 
the ovary (see the preparation). This circumstance led me to conclude that it was 
the remains of an old Graafian follicle, from which, at perhaps the last catamenial 
period, an ovule had escaped. 
The Fallopian tubes were highly congested, especially at their fimbriated extremi- 
ties, where, from the abundance of turgid capillary vessels, the tubes assumed a 
bright scarlet appearance. The cavities of the oviducts were filled with, and much 
distended by, a thick bloody mucus, which readily escaped from their peritonea! 
apertures when the tubes were subjected to slight pressure between the finger and 
thumb. Both of the Fallopian tubes were carefully laid open by means of a pair of 
fine scissors — the operation being conducted on a clean white plate, containing a 
little water, — and their contents were minutely examined. The right tube did not 
present any object worthy of notice ; but the left one contained, at about ] inch from 
its distal extremity, a small white vesicular-looking body, which on being floated out 
into the water, was found to be rather ragged on its surface, and to have the size of 
the cavity noticed in the recently ruptured Graafian follicle. This body was sub- 
mitted to microscopical examination. When viewed as an opake object, nothing 
could be made out beyond the fact that it was covered with white flocculi. It was 
then placed between two pieces of glass, and examined by the aid of transmitted 
light ; but it was too opake for the eye to distinguish its structure, notwithstanding 
that the flocculi were very translucent and were seen to be made up of oval nucleated 
cells (see fig. 6). By the employment of slight pressure the body was readily crushed, 
and then I could perceive that it was composed of a mass of nucleated cells, among 
which, at one part, there was a number of highly refractive oil-globules (see fig'. 5). 
The result of this investigation led me to think that the body in question was an 
ovule, the elements of which had been so far disarranged by the pressure, that the 
memhrana granulosa and yelk-glohules were the only recognisable constituents of it. 
The fluid contained in the uterus and Fallopian tubes were likewise subjected to 
microscopical examination. That removed from the former was found to consist 
of numerous blood-discs, most of which were strongly beaded at their edges ; of 
much cylindrical epithelium, some of which was distinctly ciliated ; of a large quantity 
of granular corpuscles, like exudation cells ; of a few white globules, similar to those 
found in blood, many of which had apparently passed into the form of spindle-shaped 
or fusiform bodies by the elongation of their opposite ends ; and of a thick gelatinous 
fluid which united all the elements together (see fig. 3). That from the latter, namely. 
