Anomalies and Curiosities of MedicineGould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Science
Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
Gould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Abnormalities, Human; Medicine -- Anecdotes
In most cases there is rupture of the fetal sac into the abdominal
cavity or the uterus, and the fetus is ejected into this location, from
thence to be removed or carried therein many years; but there are
instances in which the conception has been found in situ, as depicted
in Figure 2. A sturdy woman of thirty was executed on January 16, 1735,
for the murder of her child. It was ascertained that she had passed her
catamenia about the first of the month, and thereafter had sexual
intercourse with one of her fellow-prisoners. On dissection both
Fallopian tubes were found distended, and the left ovary, which bore
signs of conception, was twice as large as the right. Campbell quotes
another such case in a woman of thirty-eight who for twenty years had
practised her vocation as a Cyprian, and who unexpectedly conceived. At
the third month of pregnancy a hard extrauterine tumor was found, which
was gradually increasing in size and extending to the left side of the
hypogastrium, the associate symptoms of pregnancy, sense of pressure,
pain, tormina, and dysuria, being unusually severe. There was
subsequently at attack of inflammatory fever, followed by tumefaction
of the abdomen, convulsions, and death on the ninth day. The fetus had
been contained in the peritoneal coat of the ovary until the fourth
month, when one of the feet passed through the cyst and caused the
fatal result. Signs of acute peritonitis were seen postmortem, the
abdominal cavity was full of blood, and the ovary much lacerated.
The termination of extrauterine pregnancy varies; in some cases the
fetus is extracted by operation after rupture; in others the fetus has
been delivered alive by abdominal section; it may be partially
absorbed, or carried many years in the abdomen; or it may ulcerate
through the confining walls, enter the bowels or bladder, and the
remnants of the fetal body be discharged.
The curious cases mentioned by older writers, and called abortion by
the mouth, etc., are doubtless, in many instances, remnants of
extrauterine pregnancies or dermoid cysts. Maroldus speaks in full of
such cases; Bartholinus, Salmuth, and a Reyes speak of women vomiting
remnants of fetuses. In Germany, in the seventeenth century, there
lived a woman who on three different occasions is said to have vomited
a fetus. The last miscarriage in this manner was of eight months'
growth and was accompanied by its placenta. The older observers thought
this woman must have had two orifices to her womb, one of which had
some connection with the stomach, as they had records of the dissection
of a female in whom was found a conformation similar to this.
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