It is remedied by many different and ingenious plastic operations.
In an occasional instance in which there is occlusion at the umbilicus and again at the neck of the bladder this organ becomes so distended as to produce a most curious deformity in the fetus.

Figure 143 shows such a case.
The Heart .-- Absence of the heart has never been recorded in human beings except in the case of monsters, as, for example, the omphalosites, although there was a case reported and firmly believed by the ancient authors,--a Roman soldier in whom Telasius said he could discover no vestige of a heart.
The absence of one ventricle has been recorded.

Schenck has seen the left ventricle deficient, and the Ephemerides, Behr, and Kerckring speak of a single ventricle only in the heart.

Riolan mentions a heart in which both ventricles were absent.

Jurgens reported in Berlin, February 1, 1882, an autopsy on a child who had lived some days after birth, in which the left ventricle of the heart was found completely absent.