Earliest Human

For eleven years Dr. Arthur Tremain Hertig of Harvard Medical School has been trying to study a human embryo in the first hours after conception. Last week, Dr. Hertig told the International and Fourth American Congress on Obstetrics and Gynecology, meeting in Manhattan, that he had succeeded in studying the youngest human yet: he had put under the microscope a specimen which was obtained only 60 hours after the ovum had been fertilized.

Such human embryos can only be studied after surgery (removal of the uterus and Fallopian tubes) which happens to take place shortly after conception. Ten years ago, Dr. Hertig had to be content with eleven-day-old embryos; gradually he has found younger & younger specimens until now the time at which the human embryo descends from the Fallopian tube to the uterus, long a mystery, can almost be fixed.

The 60-hour embryo was a double-cell group (the fertilized ovum having just begun to divide) and was found in the Fallopian tube. In other cases, embryos four to four-and-a-half days old were found in the uterus. Presumably the youngest human yet observed would have descended to the uterus within a day or so.

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