What is the biologic factor in primary sterility? / by William Seaman Bainbridge, Sc.D., M.D., C.M. New York City.

  • Bainbridge, William Seaman, 1870-1947
Date:
[1926?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: What is the biologic factor in primary sterility? / by William Seaman Bainbridge, Sc.D., M.D., C.M. New York City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sponsibility of man and woman in sterile marriages, they estimated 4 that of man at about 40 per cent and that of woman at about 60 per cent. Fortunately, with our present-day tests, venereal disease, as an underlying element of sterility, can usually be diagnosed. To eliminate the condition, after it has been properly diagnosed, is a more difficult problem. To remove the great masses of syphilitic or gonorrheal ad¬ hesions from the pelvis and restore to normal what our distinguished Fellow terms “a gummed-up pelvis” is a task of no mean dimensions. In reviewing the most obvious factors of acquired sterility, we must, of course, speak of the pathologic cervical and vaginal secretions. Reynolds lays much stress on the pathology of these secretions in relation to sterility. He says “that the vaginal hostility is mainly enzymatic and of bacterial origin. Cervical hostility is mainly me¬ chanical and of inflammatory origin. Either or both of these secre¬ tions may and frequently do present conditions which absolutely pre¬ vent fertility through their destruction of the spermatozoa and which are yet so far external to the physiology of the woman as to excite no ill. health, to produce no symptoms other than the persistent steril¬ ity. ” Medical measures which will bring about alterations of these pathologic secretions must be guided by the type of microorganism the microscope reveals and the acid content of the discharge. The endocrinologic factor in sterility may be of as much importance as many of our medical contemporaries consider it, but we must reason that in a woman who menstruates normally and in whom the tubes and ovaries seem properly developed, ripe ova are probably given off at intervals and this must also apply even in cases of obesity. In these cases where menstruation is regular and the organs of normal development, the endocrinologic factor is probably of extremely minor importance. Extreme anemia, or other constitutional disease, or cases of evident undernourishment should certainly be investigated when sterility is present. Diet influences the fertility of rats, and cattle conceive best while pastured in the richest grazing lands. I have not been able to find any well authenticated case of human sterility in which fertility has been favorably influenced through diet. “Fecundation implies the union of normal spermatozoa with healthy ripe ova and the migration of the ova through the tube.” Sterility may be due to the absence of either one or both of these factors or to the prevention of their union by obstruction, or by the blocking off of the fertilized ovum through the tube. Today, there are two scientific short cuts to determine whether the sterility is due to a recognizable cause, and one of the tests covers the possibility of the sterility of the male as well as that of the female. I refer, as is evident, to the Hiihner test for sterility, and the Rubin test for the nonoperative determination of the patency of the fallopian tubes. The importance