The science and art of midwifery.

  • William Thompson Lusk
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The science and art of midwifery. 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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    is approached. The veins start as radicles from the capillaries, then rapidly enlarge, and present a varicose appearance. By their anasto- moses they form a plexus, which includes spaces of very irregular size. The blood is then taken up by venous trunks, which run parallel to the arterial branches, and terminate finally in the internal spermatic vein (termed by Sappey, Fig. 19, the utero-ovarian vein). Upon the basis of the foregoing description * Rouget draws a par- allel between the structures of the penis and those of the corpus uteri, and claims identity between the two organs. One feature, however, of the erectile tissue, as generally understood, is wanting in the uterus, viz., a dense, fibrous sheath, a tunica albuginea, inclosing the erectile organ, limiting the degree of its distention and enhancing its tur- gidity. As experimental proof that the uterus possesses erectile properties, Rouget has shown that, when an injection is forced by the spermatic artery, in the dead subject, so as completely to distend the vessels of the body of the uterus, the latter becomes elevated in the pelvis, and makes a movement similar to that performed by the penis during venereal excitement. It is, however, obvious that the forcible distention of the vessels of a flaccid uterus, in which the muscular walls are deprived of their normal tonus by death, does not necessarilv represent the phenomena produced during life by the turgescence resulting from either ovula- tion or the sexual orgasm. Unfortunately, so far as the body of the uterus is concerned, the difficulties in the way of direct observation upon the living subject have hitherto rendered the settlement of this point impossible. With regard to the cervix uteri, we have physiological as well as anatomical reasons for admitting a certain kind of erectility. To be sure, a tunica albuginea is wanting. It is, therefore, not an ideal erec- tile organ. But it is among the occasional unpleasant experiences of gynaecological practice that a simple digital examination, made for the purpose of a diagnosis, may evoke the venereal orgasm. Precise observations as to the phenomena presented by the accessible portion of the uterus during the orgasm have been furnished by Wernich,f Litzmann,]; and in one remarkable case by Beck,# which leave very little doubt that strong erotic excitement is attended by a rigidity of the cervix, which produces an impression upon the fingers similar to that imparted by the glans of the male organ during erection. * Rouget, Recherches sur les Organes Erectiles de la Femme, Jour, dc la Physi- ol., t. i, pp. 338 et seq. f Wernich, Die Erectionsfahigkeit des unteren Uterus-Abschnittes, Beitr. zur Geburtsh. ur.d Gynaek., Bd. i, p. 296. X Wagner's Ilandworterbuch der Physiologic, Bd. iii, p. 53. # Beck, How do the Spermatozoa enter the Uterus ? Am. Jour. Obst,, Nov., 1874.