| Abstrakt: |
That the pregnancy of mammals may be affected by environmental factors is well known. Thus it has been said that the abortion rate was raised among female settlers in the tropics (Castellani & Chalmers, 1919) and more recently, Macfarlane et al.(1957) demonstrated experimentally that a high proportion of the foetuses were absorbed when pregnant rats were exposed to a temperature of 35° C. Their findings confirmed the reduction in litter size at a temperature of 32° C previously observed by Sundstroem(1927) in rats and by Oegle(1934) in mice.Reduced oxygen tension may have similar effects on the course of pregnancy and may also produce a high incidence of malformations, as Curley & Ingalls(1957) demonstrated by exposing mice to a low-oxygen atmosphere at normal pressure for two hours on the tenth day of pregnancy.Holland(1958) investigated the action of hypoxia on the adrenal weight in newborn |
