CLASS V. state that the stomach, which was natural, was half fille with a liquid resembling that of the amnios. III. Diffi culties accompanying generation. Subject formerly discussed with much ability and at great length, in the Edin burgh Me This subject has been brought forward, and will be the subject of found ably discussed in the earlier volumes of the Edinburgh Medical Essays, by Professor Monro, and Mr. Gibson *. The latter, giving full credit to the few histories of the case then before the world, endeavours very ingeniously to account for the nutriment of the fetus by the liquor amnii, which he conjectures to be the ordinary source of supply, and not the placenta. The chief argudical Essays. ments are that the embryon is at all times found at an Supported earlier period in the uterus than in the placenta itself; by Gibson. which does not appear to be perfected till two or three months after conception; and consequently that the embryon must, thus far, at least, be supported from some other source than the placenta; and if thus far, why not through the whole term of parturition? That extra-uterine fetuses have no placenta, and yet obtain the means of growth and evolution from the surrounding parts. That the liquor amnii is analogous in its appearance to the albumen of a hen's egg, which forms the proper nourishment of the young chick: that it is found in the stomach and mouths of viviparous animals when first born; and that it diminishes in its volume in proportion to the growth of the fetus. Opposed by To these arguments it was replied by Professor Monro that we have no satisfactory proof that the liquor amnii is a nutritive fluid at all, and that in the case of amorphous fetuses produced without the vestige of a mouth or of any other kind of passage leading to the stomach, it cannot possibly be of any such use: that if the office of the placenta be not that of affording food to the embryon, it become those who maintain the contrary to determine what other office can be allotted to it; and that till this is satisfactorily done, it is more consistent with reason to doubt the few and unsatisfactory cases at that time brought for Vol. I. Art. XIII. Vol. I. Art. IX. X. XI. See also Dr. Fleming's paper. Phil. Trans. Vol. XLIX. 1775-6. p. 254. ward, than to perplex ourselves with facts directly contra- CLASS V. dictory of each other. III. Difficulties ac For the full scope of the argument the reader must turn companying to the Edinburgh Medical Essays themselves, or for a generation. the subject of close summary to the present author's observations appended to his own case. It must be admitted that the instances adverted to in the course of the discussion are but few, and most of them stamped with something unsatisfactory. Others, however, might have been advanced even at that time on authorities that would have settled the matter of fact at once, how much soever they might have confounded all explanation. But after the history just given, and the references to other cases by which it may be confirmed, this is not necessary on the present occasion. doctrine of aeration not adverted to. It is singular that the subject of aeration, which forms In this disanother difficulty in discussing the question, is not dwelt cussion the upon on either side, notwithstanding the ingenious conjecture of Sir Edward Hulse, that the placenta might be an organ of respiration as well as of nutrition, had at this time been before the public for nearly half a century: and it shows us how slow the best founded theories not unfrequently are in obtaining the meed of public assent to which they are entitled from the first. more gene explicable. These, however, are only a few of the peculiar difficul- Other difties that still accompany the subject of generation, to what- ficulties of a ever doctrine we attach ourselves. There are others that ral kind but are more general, but equally inexplicable. The whole quite as inrange of extra-uterine fetuses is of this character; often Extra-uteformed and nourished and developed without either a pla- rine fetuses developed centa or an amnios, and yet sometimes advancing, even in without the remote cavity of the ovarium, and perfect in every organ, placenta or to the age of, at least, four months, of which we have already offered an example. A great part of the range of Amorphous amorphous births defy equally all mental comprehension; births of vaparticularly the production of monsters without heads or equally unhearts, some of whom have lived for several days after accountable. birth*; others consisting of a head alone, wholly destitute See for examples and authorities the author's volume of Nosology, p. 538. amnios. rious kinds III. Diffi culties ac CLASS V. of a trunk, and yet, possessing a full developement of this organ; a specimen of which was lately in the possession of companying Dr. Elfes, of Neuss, on the Rhine*: and others again, the whole of whose abdominal and thoracic viscera has been found transposed†. the subject of generation. Transmission of ta lents,defects, or other pe culiarities from gene ration to generation. Further illustrated. Nor less inexplicable is the generative power of transmitting peculiarities of talents, of form, or of defects in a long line of hereditary descent, and occasionally of suspending the peculiarity through a link or two, or an individual or two, with an apparent capriciousness, and then of exhibiting it once more in full vigour. The vast influence which this recondite, but active power possesses, as well over the mind as the body, cannot, at all times, escape the notice of the most inattentive. Not only are wit, beauty, and genius propagable in this manner, but dulness, madness, and deformity of every kind. Even where accident, or a cause we cannot discern, has produced a preternatural conformation or singularity in a particular organ, it is astonishing to behold how readily it is often copied by the generative power, and how tenaciously it adheres to the future lineage. A preternatural defect in the hand or foot, has, in many cases, been so common to the succeeding members of a family, as to lay a foundation in every age and country for the family name, as in that of Varro, Valgius, Flaccus and Plautus at Rome. Seleucus had the mark of an anchor on his thigh, and is said to have transmitted it to his posterity: and supernumerary fingers and toes have descended in a direct line for many generations in various countries. Hence hornless sheep and hornless oxen produce an equally hornless offspring, and the broad-tailed Asiatic sheep yields a progeny with a tail equally monstrous, often of not less than half a hundred pounds weight. And hence, too, those enormous prominences in the hinder parts of one or two of the nations at the back of the Cape of Good Hope, of which examples have been furnished to us in our own island. * Hufeland, Journal der Practischen Heilkunde. Apr. 1816. How are we moreover to account for that fearful host of diseases, gout, consumption, scrofula, leprosy and madness, which, originating perhaps in the first sufferer accidentally, are propagated so deeply and so extensively that it is difficult to meet with a family whose blood is totally free from all hereditary taint? By what means this predisposition may be best resisted it is not easy to determine. But as there can be no question that intermarriages among the collateral branches of the same family tend more than any thing else to fix and multiply and aggravate it, there is reason to believe that unions between total strangers, and, perhaps, inhabitants of different countries, form the surest antidote. For admitting that such strangers to each other may be tainted on either side with some morbid predisposition peculiar to their respective lineages, each must lose something of its influence by the mixture of a new soil; and we are not without analogies to render it probable that in their mutual encounter the one may even destroy the other by a specific power. And hence, nothing can be wiser, on physical as well as on moral grounds, than the restraints which divine and human laws have concurred in laying on marriages between relations and though there is something quaint and extravagant, there is something sound at the bottom, in the following remark of the sententious Burton upon this subject: "And surely", says he, "I think it has been ordered by God's especial providence, that, in all ages, there should be, once in six hundred years, a transmigration of nations to amend and purify their blood, as we alter seed upon our land; and that there should be, as it were, an inundation of those northern Goths and Vandals, and many such like people, which came out of that continent of Scandia and Sarmatia, as some suppose, and over-ran, as a deluge, most part of Europe and Africa, to alter, for our good, our complexions that were much defaced with hereditary infirmities, which by our lust and intemperance we had contracted.” * Boethius informs Anatomy of Melancholy, Vol. 1. Part 1. Sect 11. p. 89. 8vo. Scotland. CLASS V. III. Diffi culties ac generation. us of a different and still severer mode of discipline at one time established in Scotland for the same purpose, companying but which, however successful, would make, I am afraid, the subject of sad havoc in our own day, were it ever to be carried into execution. “If any one”, says he, 66 were visited with the falling sickness, madness, gout, leprosy, or any such dangerous disease, which was likely to be propagated from father to son, he was instantly castrated; if it were a woman she was debarred all intercourse with men; and if she were found pregnant with such complaint upon her, she and her unborn child were buried alive." * De Veterum Scotorum Moribus, Lib. 1. |