Clinical gynaecology, medical and surgical / by eminent American teachers; ed. by John M. Keating ... and Henry C. Coe.

  • John Marie Keating
Date:
1897
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical gynaecology, medical and surgical / by eminent American teachers; ed. by John M. Keating ... and Henry C. Coe. 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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    not accept wholly his inference, that woman is not affected sexually by the natural cessation of her menses. Koeberle sums up his opinion in the following words : In my own experience the extirpation of both ovaries causes no marked change in the general condition of those who have been operated on. They are women who may be considered as having abruptly reached the climacteric. Their instincts and affections remain the same, their sexual organs continue excitable, and their breasts do not wither up.1 A riper experience, of which time was the main element, has led me still further to modify my views on this subject. Undoubtedly the natural change of life when fully established, but not until it is fully established, does very sensibly dull and deaden the sexual sense of woman, which ultimately disappears in her long before virility is extinguished in man. Reveille-Parise, in his excellent treatise on old age, enlarges on this fact, and makes the period of gradually lessening sexual feeling in woman to last from the age of forty-five to that of fifty, when this sense is usually lost.2 Nor is the survival of the sexual feeling after the menopause -<■ essential to the woman, because when menstruation ceases she loses the power of procreation, which is retained to an advanced age by the man. This is a wise provision of nature, for did the sexual sense of the wife outlast that of the husband it could not be gratified. Sensible in herself of these changes in her sex, a gifted French authoress makes one of her heroines say, with italicized emphasis, Men may forget the course of years; they may love and become parents at a more advanced period than we can, for nature prescribes a term after which there seems to be something mon- strous and impious in the idea of [our] seeking to awaken love. . . . Yes ! age closes our mission as women and deprives us of our sex. Now, what happens in the natural change of life holds good in that artificially pro- duced, with this important difference, that in the latter the sexual feeling is sooner lost. I am willing to concede that in some women, by no means in all, whose health has been so crippled as to quench all sexual feeling, there is after castration a partial recovery of the lost sense whenever health has been regained. Yet even in these cases, so far as I can ascertain,—for women are loath to talk about these matters,—the flame merely flares up, flickers, and soon goes out. My own large experience would lead me to the conclusion that in the majority of women who have been castrated the sexual impulse soon abates in intensity, much sooner than after a natural menopause, and that in many cases it wholly disappears. This tallies witli (ilavaccke's verdict, that in most of the cases the sexual desire is notably lessened and in many cases is extinguished. In corroboration of this statement I could cite many cases in point, but, as I have done so elsewhere,' I shall not repeat them here. In other sexual characteristics I have not found in these women any marked 1 Nouveau Dictionnaire de MMecine ot ile Chirurgie, tome xxv. p. 487. 2 Traiti? de la Vieillesse, chap. i.\. 3 The .Medical News, December 9, 1893, p. 053.