Essays on the puerperal fever and other diseases peculiar to women : Selected from the writings of British authors previous to the close of the eighteenth century / Ed. by Fleetwood Churchill.
- Fleetwood Churchill
- Date:
- 1849
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Essays on the puerperal fever and other diseases peculiar to women : Selected from the writings of British authors previous to the close of the eighteenth century / Ed. by Fleetwood Churchill. 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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![The reason of this will be satisfactorily explained by two cases, which will be related in this paper. The cauliflower excrescence arises always from some part of the os uteri.1 As several of the early symptoms are not very distressing to the patient, the tumour in the beginning is rarely the subject of medical attention; the first changes of structure have therefore not been observed. I do not recollect that I have ever met with a case in which the size of the tumour was less than that of a blackbird's Qgg>2 At this period it makes an irregular projection, and has a base as broad as any other part of it, attached to some part of the os uteri. The surface has a granulated feel; considerable pressure, or handling it, does not occasion any sense of pain. The remainder of the os uteri will, at this period, be found to have no sensible alteration of structure. By degrees, more and more of the circle of the os uteri, and the external part of the cervix uteri, become affected with the same morbid alteration of structure, till at length the whole is involved in the disease. The growth is in some cases slow, but in others rapid, so that in the course of nine months it will sometimes entirely fill up the cavity of the pelvis, and block up the entrance of the vagina.3 1 [ In Mr. Brodie's Museum there is a preparation of the uterus of a young woman who died in St. James's Infirmary from cancer of the breast. During the progress of the disease she had a constant discharge from the vagina. The uterus was not examined during life, but after death it was found enlarged and containing a vascular excrescence, which grew from the fundus and projected into its cavity, and which Mr. Brodie tells me, has precisely the appearance of the cauliflower excrescence of the neck of the uterus.—Gooch on the more Important Diseases of Women, p. 304. Mr. Safford Lee mentions a case in which the tumour grew both from the cervix uteri and upon the walls of the vagina (Tumours of the Uterus, p. 96).—Ed.] 2 [I removed a tumour of this kind, with a portion of the cervix, a fortnight ago, which had not attained to this size, and which had yet attracted attention for more than a year by profuse discharges of watery fluid and blood.—Ed.] 3 I learned this fact from the following case. I was consulted by a young woman. about 26 years of age, who was suffering under a profuse uterine discharge, the appearance of which led me to believe that it proceeded from this disease. I was confirmed in this opinion by finding the whole pelvis filled with a cauliflower ex- crescence, so large as to impede the free passage of the faeces and urine. She appeared to be sinking fast under the quantity of the discharge. Xo statement was made to me of the probability of her being pregnant. As she did not reside in London, I saw her only a few times. About six weeks after my first visit to her, she was suddenly seized with pain in the abdomen, which](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21030170_0539.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
