The Foetal Circulation: 6Th and Final Edition

By Alan Gilchrist

This little book first appeared on the public stage to a small audience in 2011. The 2019 6th edition now bows out for the last time. There had to be further editions after the first when the author, his most severe critic, introduced new ideas and corrected the errors of the previous ones. But running through them all has been the strong thread of his conviction that the placental supply for the foetus feeds the left atrium, not the right, and that it is the foetus which is delivered: the baby is born after the delivery when the first deep breath is taken. In this final edition the author shows the correct supply for the left atrium by some fundamental facts of physiology and by direct observations of the foetus: human and sheep, which demolish the long-established orthodox accounts. One of his glaring errors in the 4th version was to deny the lungs a pulmonary circulation. In this present edition he not only corrects himself, but uncovers the full pathway of this circulation, which shows the course taken by the arterial supply and the venous return. There is a comprehensive valuable account of the foramen ovale, which, like many of the other aspects of this work, is entirely new. The unique characteristics of the foetal heart sounds are described, which any lady in the later months of pregnancy may hear with a Doppler monitor, and which confirm that the placental fl ow enters the left atrium. The invisible birth changes which have never been seen, are guessed at in full detail. The work is generously illustrated with diagrams, drawings and photos from the hands of the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Nov 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728395067

Alan Gilchrist

The author’s father was the manager of a biscuit factory in an industrial area of north west London. He had served in the Great War, and after the war his first wife died in the 1919 flu pandemic, leaving him with a young daughter. He remarried and had another four children, Alan being the second. With scant formal education themselves, he and his wife were able to off er all the children a good education, and to Alan a medical one as well. It was during a biology class in his first year in the medical school that the author first heard about two streams of blood in the same chamber of the heart. In 1956, ‘by a set of curious chances’ (The Mikado), the author found himself in the setting he had dreamt about when he was a little boy: practising medicine in rural Africa. This was in Nyasaland, part of the former Central African Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. (Now Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi). In 1962 he was posted to Zomba as medical superintendent and met Pauline who had been born in the same hospital 21 years previously. The following year they were married, and immediately after the reception left for Fort Victoria in Rhodesia, where he had been offered the post of medical superintendent. Those were momentous times: bringing up a young family in a rapidly changing African environment and practising medicine in the midst of it. The story would make interesting reading, but the author has put it aside and only shown the details of his investigations of the foetal circulation in his little book.

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© 2019 Alan Gilchrist. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

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ISBN: 978-1-7283-9505-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-9506-7 (e)

Published by AuthorHouse 04/22/2020

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This little

book is dedicated to my

parents, James and Ivy Gilchrist, and to

my wife Pauline.

Acknowledgements

The 5th edition of this book was produced in cramped quarters when I was living with my son Andrew and his wife Kim and their three sons. Since October 2018 I have been living by myself in a little flat which has given me more space to live and work in. Andrew has been a great help in the transition and keeps an eye on me from time to time, while I miss Kim’s expertise assistance on my computer. Most important was having the space to fit in a deep freezer in which I could store my animal dissections, instead of just bottling them in formalin and keeping them in the garden. The move seems to have helped me to think more clearly and this final edition introduces many new ideas. In the 5th edition I told you about my back injury which prevented me from working on one of the lambs, but though I am less mobile now I have been able to examine more foetal lambs and complete this edition. I now have a little scooter which is a great boon; I can whizz round to the shops at 3.8 mph and get all I need without waiting for buses. I have tried to improve the quality of my diagrams, but some of the letters of the captions are still wobbly.

I am very grateful to Sophia Anderton, Head of Publishing & Digital Learning in the British Institute of Radiology, who has very kindly permitted me to publish details of two articles from the British Journal of Radiology. To Oswestry farmer Graham Jones, I again give many thanks for providing me with stillborn lambs which have played a large part in helping to unravel the hidden mysteries of the foetal circulation. In this regard I must also thank Kevin Battams of Battams Butchery in Oswestry for providing me with parts of the postnatal lamb. I still run into difficulties with my laptop, but I have been helped at home by Ben Hillidge of the Reliant Company in Oswestry. Nigel of Cartridge World Oswestry has again come to my rescue and solved my printer problems. A special mention and thanks for John Quinn, photographer in Oswestry for the high quality of his work in reproducing my diagrams in high resolution. This little book conceived in Africa and nurtured in England, has been safely delivered after a long and difficult labour, in Oswestry. It is a newly born offspring of Oswestry, which is now able to receive visitors. I invite you to come and see it. Alan.

References

The Foetal Circulation. The Personal Account by a Zimbabwe Family Practitioner. By Alan Gilchrist. Printed in Zimbabwe by Graphtec Zimbabwe.2011.

A Visit to Nyasaland/The Foetal Circulation. By Alan Gilchrist. Printed by YOUCAXTON PUBLICATIONS. 2014.

The Foetal Circulation Reflections. By Alan Gilchrist. Printed by YOUCAXTON PUBLICATIONS. 2015.

The Foetal Circulation. By Alan Gilchrist. Published by AUTHORHOUSE. 2017.

The foetal Circulation. 5th Edition. By Alan Gilchrist. Published by AUTHORHOUSE. 2018.

Foetal and Neonatal Physiology. By G. S. DAWES. Published by YEAR BOOK MEDICAL PUBLISHERS, INC. Chicago. 1968.

Contents

Part One

The Plan

Part Two

The Sections

The Venturi.

The Circulation for the Upper Body.

The Circulation for the Placenta.

The Circulation for the Lower Body.

The Junction.

The Foramen Ovale.

The Left Atrium.

The Postnatal Right Atrium.

The Lungs.

The Liver.

The Block.

Part Three

The Foetal Heart Sounds

Part Four

The Birth Changes

Conclusion.

The Foetal Circulation.

Part One

The Plan

In the postnatal creature, which I call a postnate, Diagram 1, the two great arteries which leave the heart together curve upwards; the pulmonary trunk from the right ventricle ending abruptly by bifurcating into the two pulmonary arteries for the lungs, while the aorta from the left ventricle supplies the upper body and curves over the pulmonary arteries to pass down behind them as the descending aorta to supply the lower body. The blood in