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XVI. On the Placentation of the Apes, with a Comparison of the Structure of their 
Placen ta with that of the Human Female. 
By Wm. Turner, M.B. ( Bond .), F.R.SS. L. & E., Professor of Anatomy in the 
University of Edinburgh. 
Received March 11, — Read March 28, 1878. 
[Prates 48 and 49.] 
Contents. 
Page- 
Introduction 523 
Gravid Uterus of Macacus cynomolgus 526 
Structure of the wall of the Uterus . . 529 
Structure of the Placenta 532 
Comparison of the Placenta of the Ape with that of the Human Female 537 
The placenta in the Quadrumana has from time to time engaged the attention of 
anatomists. 
John Hunter* seems to have been the first to describe and figure the placenta of 
a monkey, which had been shed in the ordinary course of parturition, after the birth 
of a single fcetus. The placenta was divided into two oblong contiguous lobes, and 
each lobe was made up of smaller lobes closely united together. Fissures were seen 
on the uterine surface of the placenta, in which were situated veins or sinuses that 
received the blood laterally from the lobes, and that passed through the decidua to 
enter the substance of the uterus. The substance of the placenta seemed to be 
“cellular” as in the human subject : an arrangement which allowed a communication 
to be kept up between different parts of each lobe, as well as between different lobes. 
Hunter recognised the chorion and amnion. The decidua was thicker than in the 
human subject. The allantois was absent. Hunter does not give the generic name 
of this monkey, but Professor Owen calls it Macacus rhesus, and in the “ Catalogue 
* ‘Animal (Economy, 1786.’ Also in collected works by Palmer, vol. iv., p. 71, plates xxxv., xxxvi., 
and fig. 2, xxxiv. The nterine and fcetal surfaces of the same placenta are figured by Sir E. Home, 
‘ Comparative Anatomy,’ vol. iv., plates 167, 168. The description of the placenta of an Ape given in 
‘ Les GEuvres de Vicq-d’Aztr,’ vol. v., p, 318, 1805, is an almost verbatim translation of Hunter’s 
description, though Hunter’s name is not given as the authority. 
