A treatise on the organic diseases of the womb.

  • John Balbirnie
Date:
[1836?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the organic diseases of the womb. 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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    attention to uterine diseases. From the same neglect, and from, in them, an ill-suiting delicacy, they yield too implicitly to the very natural prejudices of the patient; and dare not advise to submit to an examination, indispensably ne- cessary. They too often regard, as purely nervous, those symptoms, which are the first announcements of a commencing organic lesion of the womb. The sympathetic affections — the de- rangements of the digestive tube, for example — are too often taken for the principal disease. Mere palliatives are prescribed; or the patient is ex- hausted with symptomatic treatment, or general remedies, which act but remotely from the cause. Time is gained, and the original disease is allowed to proceed. We find no fault, indeed, with general means: these are often necessary. But would a surgeon ever think of treating a case of scrofulous ophthalmia, for example, by mere constitutional treatment, without, at the same time, applying the appropriate local medication ? Many practitioners are content to prescribe, in the cases in question, upon the simple statement of the patient herself. But what mere random prac- tice is that! How little precise are such state- ments, and how little suited to form the basis of an accurate diagnostic! In an organ so nice and complicated — whose sympathies are so extensive, and the accurate diagnostic of whose diseases is often so difficult and embarrassing, even to the most