A treatise on the diseases and special hygiène of females / By Colombat de l'Isère. Translated from the French, with additions, by Charles D. Meigs.
- Marc Colombat de L'Isère
- Date:
- 1850
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A treatise on the diseases and special hygiène of females / By Colombat de l'Isère. Translated from the French, with additions, by Charles D. Meigs. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
107/764 (page 101)
![Upon Touching, the vagina was found to be closed above the middle by adhesions which seemed perfectly to have obstructed the passage, and a firm band was found to extend from the left side of it upwards and backwards, to its termination ; so also after the belly had been opened, drawing the wound upward, a rent was perceived at its anterior part, immediately above the attachment of the vagina, extending from side to side. Passing the finger through this into the vagina, it was arrested, as below, by the adhesions, and with a finger on either side, the septum appeared to be half an inch in thick- ness, and of very firm texture. The closure of the vagina appeared to be perfect, with the exception of a canal through which a quill of small size might be forced, the orifices of which were obscure. The septum itself was very dense, and composed of the fibrous tissue of cicatrix. It appears further, from Dr. Brainerd's statement, that the woman was twenty-eight years of age, robust, and had had two children, the first still-born, after a severe labour, the second still-born at the seventh month, after a labour oflfour hours, having suffered very little. It appears to me, from the perusal of the case, that the womb was lace- rated in vain attempts to overcome the resistance of this stricture of the vagina, and as the woman was seized with symptoms of labour on the 2d of April, there was time between that and the 6th, when the organ gave way, to have dilated the vagina by the bougie and the instrument I have described, or even by sponge tent diligently employed. I have preferred to state this important case in brief here, in order to raise the question as to the safety of exposing a female, by an imperfect dilatation of a congenite narrowness of the vagina, to the dangers consequent on conception ; and also to show that in this instance fecundation took place, though the aperture barely admitted a quill of small size. Since the publication of the first American edition of this work, I have met with a case of congenital narrowness of the vagina, in which the canal was so small that it was with great difficulty, and very considerable pain to the patient, that I carried the index finger to the bottom of the canal. The patient had been two and a half years married, and had not conceived. Indeed, a sexual union was clearly impossible. I gave her a series of slightly conical silver gilt bougies, which were used in succession. In the course of some three weeks the vagina was rendered natural, and that without pain or inflam- mation. I found it true that a silver bougie of one inch in diameter, would produce a dilatation which readily admitted the insertion of one an inch and a quarter on the following day. Within a few months after the cure she became pregnant for the first time. The same instruments have served to restore the calibre of the canal in another individual, in whom total atresia followed a very distressing abortion at the sixth month.— M.] Congenite narrowness of the vagina does not always prevent con-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21029313_0107.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
