On common neuroses, or, The neurotic element in disease and its rational treatment.

  • Goodhart, James F. (James Frederic), Sir, 1845-1916.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On common neuroses, or, The neurotic element in disease and its rational treatment. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    fundamental condition, and only to operate when patient means have failed. And here may be said what need be with reference to uterine and ovarian neuralgias. I have said it is a bad day for a man when he first knows he has a heart; it is a ten times worse day for a woman when the pelvic pains to which so many are subject are focussed for her by medical opinion upon uterus or ovary. If there is anything that curdles my blood it is to hear a woman talk of her ovaries as she might of some intimate acquaintance. One cannot of course suppose (as Sir William Gull used to say of the jejunum that it has no pathology) that organs fulfilling such important functions should have no liability to the aches and pains that all flesh is heir to, or even that they are free from a large measure of disease. We know that it is not so, but there can be no doubt that the ovaries are organs that largely concern themselves with functional disease, and with forms of it, too, that penetrate into the inmost recesses of the patient's being. Do we always remember this at the present day, with all the prevalent means of treating disease locally ? Do we not sometimes undertake local treat- ment hazardously, I mean as regards the chances of real improvement, because it can be effected with so little risk to life ? Is it not too often, It cannot do any harm, and it may do good ? Surgery can happily accomplish now much of what it undertakes ;