658 REMARKS ON PARTURITION IN ANIMALS, 
putrefaction; it became mummified. The exclusion of air 
was probably owing to the membranes not being ruptured. 
All these events and conditions are not unfrequent in the 
human female, except the very tardy expulsion of the litho- 
paedion. I have seen many instances of the retention of the 
whole or part of an early abortion for a very long time, even 
beyond the full term of the pregnancy, had it gone on all 
right; but I have not seen the retention of what could be 
called a lithopaedion, in an uniparous pregnancy, beyond 
what would have been the full term. The ordinary course is 
for the foetus to die, the liquor amnii to become absorbed, 
the wound to diminish in bulk, and the mass to be expelled 
at or before what would have been the full term of pregnancy. 
The foetus when so expelled has a peculiar appearance, and is 
rolled up, parcel like, in the placenta and membranes. 
Lithopaedion, or a more or less perfect foetus papyraceus, 
is not very rarely observed in pluriparous pregnancy, gene¬ 
rally as one of twins. Here the foetus dies in some early 
month, and remains in utero, to be expelled along with its 
surviving co-twin, or within a few days after it. 
In all of these cases of lithopaedion there is missed labour, 
or rather missed abortion or miscarriage. Conditions that, 
in the immense majority of cases, induce abortion or mis¬ 
carriage, fail to do so in these remarkable instances. But 
there are two points in which the cow appears to differ in a 
marked way from woman; for, first, in the cow, the labour 
may be, and is often, missed, not only at or near the time of 
the foetal death, but also at what would be the full term. 
This is, at least, a much rarer occurrence in woman, the 
lithopaedion in her being generally, and as far my own ex¬ 
perience goes always, expelled at latest when the full term of 
pregnancy is reached. Secondly, in the cow, an event not 
very rarely happens which I have never witnessed in woman, 
but which has been described as having occurred in her; 
namely, not the formation of a mummy premature foetus or 
of a lithopaedion, but putrefaction of the premature foetus, 
and slow discharge of the products of the putrefying mass, 
Avithout labour-pains being induced. 
We have already said that in all these cases there is missed 
labour; but that term may be specially applied exclusively 
to those cases where the foetus dies at the full term of preg¬ 
nancy, or after it has passed, after the already mature foetus 
has waited weeks for labour, which never comes, or comes 
imperfectly, or comes after long morbid delay. Such cases 
are comparatively not very rare, I believe, in the lower ani¬ 
mals, as sheep and cows. In women they are very rare. 
