Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Lectures on the diseases of women / by Charles West. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![ALTERED SENSIBILITY. functions of other organs not seldom attends upon the physiologi- cal processes going on in the womb, so may it follow upon uterine irritation produced by disease; and a large proportion of the most obstinate forms of dyspepia, and a still larger number of hysterical and nervous affections, have been excited and are kept up by disease of the womb. In a great many of these cases, minute inquiry elicits evidence of functional disorder of the generative organs, as shown by disturbed menstruation, by leucorrhceal dis- charges, or by painful sensations, although none of these symptoms may have been so marked as to have engaged the patient's notice; or she may have regarded them as trivial accidents not worth mention when compared with the other, and to her feelings the more important causes of her sufferings.* Need I guard myself against being misunderstood—against being supposed to say that, in the management of a woman who is dyspeptic, your attention is to be turned less to the state of her stomach than to that of her womb; or that, if a woman suffers from neuralgia, you are at once to suspect the existence of uterine disease ? I mean no such thing; though a statement as extreme as this has been made by men of good repute ;-f- but what I do mean is, that, in the treatment of diseases occurring among patients of the female sex, you should always bear in mind that, besides the ordinary causes of disease common to both sexes, there is another set of causes peculiar to themselves. Whenever, therefore the ordinary principles of pathology fail to explain, or the ordinary proceedings of therapeutics prove inadequate to cure the ailments of any female patient, it behoves you to remember that in her sex, and in its peculiar diseases, you may perhaps find a clue to the cause of her present symptoms, and discover indica- tions which may show you how to accomplish their cure. * In vol. ii. of Lisfranc's Clinique Chirurgicale, 8vo, Paris, 1842, from p. 182 to p. 256, are some remarks, with, illustrative cases, on errors of diagnosis in uterine disease, which, though not free from the characteristic faults of that writer, will yet well repay an attentive perusal. t [It is of at least historical interest to note the expressions of so eminent a man as Mayer of Berlin. The condemnation of such imprudent practice requires no expression. In his Klinisclie Mittheilungcn aus dcm Gcbiete der Oyncacologie, 1861, he gives a heartrending description of the results of uterine catarrh, so called ulcer- ation, and blames the neglect of practitioners to examine, even in cases when all symptoms having disappeared, a dangerous confidence has, he says, been established. He declares it imprudent to neglect uterine examination in any case whatever of nervous disease in a female, such as headache, palpitation, &c]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21923796_0025.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
