Note 2 — PROLEGOMENA.

If the reader can procure a placenta which has been thrown off immediately after the birth of the child, without any effort, and cleaning it of all coagula from off the surface which lay next to the uterus, by careful maceration and washing, he will afterwards introduce a small quill or pointed tube into one of the arteries of the navel-string, and blow strongly into it, he will find that the air raises upon that surface, to various degrees of puffiness, a very delicate pellicular covering, through which none of the air can escape, unless through an accidental laceration. I have often made the experiment, which I used to relate to my class in my lectures on midwifery many years ago. Lauth, of Strasburgh, has stated the same thing; so had Ruysch long since, and others, proving at once that there is not a direct communication with the mother from the fœtus.