An inquiry into the pathological importance of ulceration of the os uteri : being the Croonian lectures for the year 1854 / by Charles West.
- Charles West
- Date:
- 1854
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An inquiry into the pathological importance of ulceration of the os uteri : being the Croonian lectures for the year 1854 / by Charles West. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
48/132 (page 40)
![In the remaining 3 cases, the abrasion was more extensive, surrounding the os uteri for about a third of an inch; and in the case of one of these three, that of a woman who had given birth to children, the lips of the os were noted to be elongated: this, however, was the nearest ap- proach to a hypertrophied state of the cervix met with in the whole forty cases; while in no instance was there any such alteration of the texture of the part as to deserve the name of induration. These facts, however, after all, prove no more than this,—that the susceptibility of the os and cervix uteri to the effects of local injury has probably been over-estimated; they do not bear, or bear but very slightly, on the more important enquiry as to the value to be attached to ulcera- tion of the os uteri when present. In approaching this question, as we are bound to do with no conscious bias of the mind in one or the other direction, three different possibilities at once suggest themselves to us, of which any one mav be correct. ]st. Ulceration of the os uteri may be the cause of all the symptoms of uterine disease which have been attributed to it; and consequently it may be of no less importance to remove it when present, than to ascertain the fact of its existence. 2nd. Though not in itself the cause of the symptoms, or at least of the greater part of them, it may yet be the concomitant of certain forms of uterine disease; of the state and progress of which its extent and degree may be a trustworthy index. In this case, though of small im- portance as far as therapeutical proceedings are concerned, it may yet be of great semeiological value. 3rd. Neither the one nor the other of these suppositions may be correct; but either the ulceration may exist alone, giving rise in that case to few symptoms, or to none at](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2108399x_0048.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
