On surgical diseases of women / by I. Baker Brown.

  • Isaac Baker Brown
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On surgical diseases of women / by I. Baker Brown. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    369/468 (page 305)
    Jones made it certain that a greater importance must be attached to local sources of irritation, especially about the genital organs, in the causation of nervous and convulsive diseases, than had hitherto been done. What before had been but vaguely present to my mind now became clear, and so far as the opinions of these writers referred to peripheral excite- ment of the pudic nerve, I determined to subject them to a systematic surgical test. This I have done, and the results are given in detail in the book, already referred to, on the cura- bility of certain forms of nervous and convulsive diseases. Of the happy results of the practice I have no doubt, and the cases I have published will, I think, convince the reader, that several forms of the most painful and distressing diseases of females may be effectually cured by excision of the clitoris. The operation has, however, been subjected to much adverse criticism, to which it is requisite that I should briefly refer. First of all, with a forgetfulness of physiology, scarcely credible in these days, the opponents of the operation have declared that it unsexes a woman/5 The objection is as old as the operation itself, and the phrase in which it has been urged a more free translation from Aetius, who thus expressed it, hinc vero scepe sterilitas exoritur. Putting- aside all theory, the fact that several of my patients have become pregnant after the operation is a complete reply to this objection. (See Cases 3, 9, 11, 19, 48, in my work on the subject.) In the face of the most indisputable evidence that the clitoris is not an essential part of the generative system, the expression mutilation of the person, so freely employed, may be passed over as possessing no meaning other than that in which it would be applicable to numerous recognized surgical proceedings. The author of a recent work on Diseases of Women con- fesses that, If the habit could be overcome, if the mind could be restored to its purity by any mutilation of the per- son, one would feel no penalty could be too great to pay for such a boon. Yet he goes on to add, The seat of sexual feeling is, however, by no means confined to the clitoris. If this be the case, wherein consists the author's objection x