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.
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