A treatise on the theory and practice of obstetrics / By Wm. H. Byford.

  • William Heath Byford
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the theory and practice of obstetrics / By Wm. H. Byford. 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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    adult virgin, while in rare eases it is very firm; it may resist marital approaches, and even parturient violence, and be carried through the whole child-bearing term of life. Writers describe varieties of shape of the hymen; it occasionally (doses the whole vagina] opening to the urethra, sometimes it stretches across from one side to the other, leaving an opening above and below it. The great labia terminate in the strong muscular partition be- tween the vagina and rectum, the perinseum. This latter is about an inch and a quarter wide, made up of the contributions of the sphincters ani and vaginae, where they commingle and decussate in such a manner as to be lost in each other—the coinmingling of the opposite fibres of the levator ani and trans versus peri me i muscles, etc. This thick assemblage of muscular fibres is broad on the cutaneous surface, separating, as has been before said, the anus and vaginal orifice by a space of one inch and a cuiarter. It extends up between the vagina and rectum about an inch, ter- minating where these two tubes approach each other. At the raphe or dividing line, if we push a knife upward to its termi- nation we will find that it has traversed a triangle, the base of which is at the skin, and the apex above between the rectum and vagina. The importance of the vascular apparatus of the clitoris induces me to call the attention of the reader again to that organ. The corpus spongiosum, which covers the ends of the two corpora cavernosa, is supplied with blood by a branch of the pudic artery, and has connection witli the remarkable congeries of veins called the bulb of the clitoris. (See Fig. 25.) This collection of tor- tuous, commingled, and interlacing veins is situated immediately behind the labia majora, <>n either side, at their junction with the vagina, bo thai an instrument penetrating the centre of the labia would WOUnd it. It is from one and a half to two inches long when distended by injection, and one quarter to half an inch in diameter at the thickest pail. The clitoris is connected to this venous body by one and sometimes more small veins. There are also several venous tubes, connecting the upper end of these bo- dies to cadi other, Lying across the vestibule. During venereal orgasm the clitoris and its bulbs are Btrongly injected with blood, and thus undergo a kind of erection, and feel somewhat hard Cinder the linger.