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muscle, which can expand itself until it is thin as a sheet of paper. During pregnancy, it increases in size and weight. It dilates so as to be capable of retaining within its cavity a child weighing twelve pounds or more, the after-birth (weighing three or four pounds), and a pint or more of water. Often it contains twins, and two after-births.
Its power of contractility is so great, that, during the process of labor, it can expel all of its contents, and reduce itself to a size very little beyond its size before pregnancy, unaided by drugs, or by the accessory efforts of the mother.
On either side of the womb is a narrow, tubular passage, one end of which enters the womb, and the other, ending in fimbriated or fringed branches, is connected with one of the ovaries. These are called the Fallopian tubes, each being four inches in length: their office is to convey the ova from the ovaries to the cavity of the uterus.
The ovaries are elongated, oval-shaped bodies, situated one on each side of the womb. They are about an inch and a half in length, three-quarters of an inch in thickness, and weigh from an eighth to a quarter of an ounce. They contain the so-called Graafian vesicles, each of which vesicles holds an ovum, an egg. Each ovary contains from fifteen to thirty of these vesicles, which vary in size from a pin's head to a pea.
The ovum, or egg, is a small spherical body, situated near the centre of the immature vesicles, approaching, however, a point on the periphery as the vesicles mature. The ova measures from 1-240 to 1-120 of an inch in diameter.
It is necessary, in order that our future remarks may be clearly understood, to give also a brief definition of the various terms for displacements of the womb.
