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.

    370/468 (page 306)
    to the practice, or the peculiar force of his words a mutila- tion of the person ? But it has been further alleged, that the operation is un- necessary \ that the habit, be it vice or disease, can be met by moral treatment. Indeed, the reviewer of my book, in the Lancet, suggests trying to persuade an hysterical patient into the belief that her ailments are imaginary, and that to effect a cure it is only necessary to induce her to exert her will, t( to make an effort. Now, I ask, who is there of any experience who has not met with cases of masturbation—in the male or female—in which no amount of moral reasoning has sufficed to put a stop to the habit ? I myself have met with cases in which months and years of restraint—moral and physical—by medical and other advice, nay, with the utmost endeavours of the patients themselves, have not sufficed to overcome the habit. Are we, then, to forbid that surgery shall come to the rescue, and cure what morals should have prevented V*—but, let me add, are so often impotent to stop. I am not ignorant of the value of rousing the patient to efforts at self-control; in- deed I have seen many recoveries by the patient's own firm will; but the cases in which moral effort suffices are not those in which I have recourse to the operation. A still more visionary objection has been propounded in the theory that a recognition of the frequency of self-abuse might suggest its practice to the pure-minded. Such a notion can only be entertained by those who are determined to shirk the question as one for impartial and scientific investiga- tion. Those who employ it may fitly consort with the bigots who refuse the boon of chloroform in labour, on the ground that Providence intended women to bring forth in sorrow. More reasonable doubts have been expressed respecting those cases of epilepsy in which clitoridectomy has been per- formed, but in which the bromide of potassium has been employed as part of the treatment. In any individual case this objection would have considerable force; but I have met with many cases in which large doses of this drug had been taken for months without the slightest benefit, nay, even