Lectures on the Comparative Anatomy of the Placenta

Abstract

THE anatomy of the Placenta has been studied by the best anatomists from Fabricius and Harvey to Hunter, Von Baer, and Sharpey; but much remained to be done when Prof. Turner took up the investigation; and those who are acquainted with his admirable memoirs, which lie hidden in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, know how much he has done to correct and extend our knowledge. The present volume contains a series of lectures delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons last year, and illustrated by specimens from their magnificent Hunterian museum, as well as from that of the University of Edinburgh. Prof. Turner has also been liberally aided by Dr. Sharpey, Mr. Huxley, and other anatomists with material, so that he is able not only to compare the placenta in man with that in the cat, bitch, cow, sheep, and mare, but also in the hyrax, elephant, seal, giraffe, alpaca, lemur, sloth, grampus, and narwhal. The present volume deals only with the diffuse, cotyledonous, and zonary forms of placenta; a second series of lectures will complete the subject by a similar discussion of the discoid placenta, and we shall then have the most complete monograph on this important structure which has yet appeared.

Lectures on the Comparative Anatomy of the Placenta.

First Series. By Wm. Turner. Lond. Pp. 122, Woodcuts, and Three Coloured Plates. (Edinburgh: A. and C. Black, 1876.)