Clinical notes on uterine surgery : with special reference to the management of the sterile condition / by J. Marion Sims.

  • J. Marion Sims
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical notes on uterine surgery : with special reference to the management of the sterile condition / by J. Marion Sims. 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.

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    1 found precisely the same state of things, viz., not a sign of semen in the vagina. Now, ]et us see why this was so. But first it might have been supposed that it was due to hasty ejaculation. Proper inquiry settled that question in the negative by the evidence of both man and wife. Why, then, was there no semen in this very capacious vagina immediately after a normal copu- lation? Let us look at its anatomical relations. The uterus was retro verted, but anteflected; the cervix was long and pointed, and rested against the urethra; the body of the uterus was somewhat hypertrophied ; the anterior wall of the vagina rather short, in consequence .6 Fig. 135. of long error of position; the vagina was otherwise very large, and the perineum relaxed. The finger carried to the bottom of the vagina, at its reduplication, «, fig. 135, could push this back towards the hollow of the sacrum relatively as far as b; this would necessarily throw the fundus upwards; the withdrawal of the finger would let it fall down again, but its momentum would carry it a little lower than the point at which it rested in equilibrio. There was nothing easier of de- monstration than this see-saw movement of the uterus by pushing the posterior cul-de-sac backwards. Now the tendency of this falling of the organ by the sudden removal of a force thus impinging against the point «, is to depress the fundus still more, which thereby pro- portionally elevates the cervix; this draws up also the