Page:Clinical Lectures on the Diseases of Women.djvu/40

 system I have spoken of. This system is happily obsolete, and we can now calmly describe this important disease. Before leaving this subject let me give you a picture, almost in the words of one of the most eminent European gynae- cologists, of the exaggerated views entertained, not above twenty years ago; and I may tell you this picture was regarded as no exaggeration by many, if not most, of the great gynaecologists of this country.

He gives a description of the fearful results of uterine catarrh and so-called ulceration, and blames the neglect of practitioners to examine — a blame which he carefully ex- tends to the management of those cases wherein all bad symptoms having disappeared without local treatment, he declares the cure to be only deceitful, and a source of dan- gerous confidence. He also expresses his conviction that in at least eight out of every ten cases of hysteria the various nervous lesions depend on some kind of uterine catarrh, and impresses on his medical brethren that in no case of nervous disease in the female does he commence treatment until he has himself made a careful vaginal examination. A few of the nervous lesions he enumerates, including nervous headaches, hysterical affections, palpitation of the heart, neuralgias of all kinds, the most various spasms, hyperesthesias, anaesthesias, paralyses of the lower extre- mities, &c. &c. ! !

Chronic catarrh is very indistinctly referable to certain causes. Among them may be enumerated childless marriage, abortion, or full-time delivery, or cold, or gonorrhoea, or to suppression of the menses, as in the case immediately before us.

The patient complains of pain in the back, or, to be more exact, about the base of the sacrum. This is a com- mon seat of cervical uterine pain, and is well illustrated in the pain experienced by women in labour during the dilata- tion of the os uteri. Pain down the thighs, feeling of