Abstract
A brief preliminary report 1 was recently made to call attention to the fact that in some of the laboratory animals it was always easy to inject from tube to uterus, whereas, when an injection was made in the reverse direction, the injection mass would pass more readily when the animal was found to be near the time of ovulation. Serial sections were made of the uterine opening of the Fallopian tube in the cat, dog, rabbit, rat, guinea pig, and pig. In all cases the opening of the tube was guarded by special folds, which, in the case of the pig, were easily visible in the gross after fixation. A single human specimen failed to show the folds. These special folds were free of glands in the case of the cat, rat, and pig; whereas in the dog a few glands were found. Furthermore, the stroma in these folds contained a large amount of connective tissue so that these structures were not flattened to the same degree as the mucosa elsewhere when pressure was applied during the injection. Finally, an increase in thickness of the muscular coats at the tubo-uterine junction was present in some animals, particularly in the rabbit.
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