Clinical lectures on the diseases of women and children / By Gunning S. Bedford.

  • Gunning S. Bedford
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical lectures on the diseases of women and children / By Gunning S. Bedford. 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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    I have, in these cases, found benefit from the nitrate of silver in solu- tion : ^ Nitrat Argenti gr. xx Aquse purae \ ij Ft. sol. Amenorrhea in a Girl, aged seventeen Years, from imperfect Physical Development.—Sarah H., aged seventeen years, has been delicate in health from her infancy. Her mother brings her to the clin- ique, feeling anxious because she has never menstruated, and begging that some medicine may be given to make her right. This case, gentlemen, is instructive, and is precisely such as you will occasionally encounter in practice. Mothers, when their daughters attain their four- teenth or fifteenth year, usually manifest much alarm if their courses do not come on. They look merely at the age, and close their eyes to all other considerations. Such must not be the conduct of the physician. It is his duty to know that the function of menstruation is dependent not upon the mere age of the individual, but upon the proper develop- ment of the ovaries. There is no fact more important for you to remember than that menstruation is in absolute connection with the function of the ovaries. Menstruation is the specific office of the ovary, as is the secretion of bile the office of the liver, or the secretion of the fecundating liquor the function of the testes. What would you think of the practitioner who should attempt by medication to produce this latter secretion in the male before the normal development of the testi- cles ? You would, if you pronounced proper judgment, deem him mad; and yet, in a professional sense, he would not be more insane than the man who should hope to force menstruation in such case, for exam- ple, as the one now before us. I could cite more than one instance of the melancholy results which have followed this attempt to coerce na- ture. But you may inquire, what evidence is there that the ovaries are not developed in this girl 1 Well, I will give you the evidence. In the first place, she has the appearance of a mere child, presenting noth ing in the least of the physical embonpoint characteristic of an ap- proach to womanhood. Her breasts are like those of a child six years of age—her hips present also the same aspect—there is none of that increase of cellular tissue, none of that peculiar fullness of the hips and breasts, so strongly demonstrative of ovarian maturity. In a word, gentlemen, the girl before us, although seventeen years of age, is in all other respects but a child. I think you said, my good woman, your daughter has been in delicate health from her infancy ? Yes sir, she has always been delicate. Has she any cough? No sir. How are her bowels V They are always more or less confined, sir. ': Has she any appetite] No sir. I am not surprised at it, my good woman. Treatment.—The amenorrhcea in this case is entitled to no notice 3