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
Catalogue details

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.

    93/764 (page 87)
    THE FEMALE URETHRA. fc< within the sac from the very commencement of the disease, fourteen years before. She scarcely felt the puncture. The whole of the dark fluid came slowly away, as from a single sac without cells or compartments, leaving the tumour shriveled and looking like a shrunken scrotum, to the great relief of the poor woman, who had been much annoyed by so strange an appendage. The quantity withdrawn was estimated to be twenty-two fluid ounces. No evil consequences followed, and the poor woman was not in the least incom- moded by the operation. There could not rest a doubt upon the mind as to the seat of the malady— it was a clitoris converted into a cyst. What is wonderful, is that the fluid should have remained so many years locked up within the clitoris, without becoming in the least degree offensive, and undergoing no other change than that which blood undergoes when detained for a long time within a reproduc- tive tissue—as in the case of atresia of the vagina. The liquid is of the same nature as that I have seen, on different occasions, from atretism of the vagina, where the catamenial fluid had been long detained in the womb. I beg leave to call the attention of the reader to this most remarkable phy- siological fact; and to say that, so far as my knowledge extends, there is no example of blood detained for months and years in cavities, without under- going decomposition, except when it is detained within the generative tissues. The blood detained in aneurisms is wholly different from the specimens to which I allude. In this case the whole of the genitalia were healthy and in an active state of vitality, with the sole exception of this altered clitoris and nymphae, with their prseputium or hood. Monday, Sept. 21, 1844, I examined the case to-day ; the tumour is form- ing again, and now contains some six or eight ounces of the fluid. I shall refer to this case again, in a note to M. Colombat's article on hysteria. As to the frequency of the occurrence, it is shown to be very rare by the researches of Parent du Chatelet in a Treatise on Prostitution, as it exists at Paris.—M.] IMPERFORATION AND STRICTURE OF THE FEMALE URETHRA. ' Although imperforation of the meatus urinarius is generally a con- sequence of the complete union of the labia, it may yet sometimes exist per se, and, in this case, the orifice of the urethra is stopped by a thin and delicate membrane, which, nevertheless, is strong enough to prevent the escape of the urine. The existence of such a case ought to be suspected where, the labia not cohering, the napkins of the infant are found not to be wetted with the usual discharge from the bladder, and where, after discharging all the meconium, it still continues to cry and to strain without effect. To these symptoms should be added the gradual enlargement of the hypogastric region, which becomes tense, painfu resisting and rounded, and exhibits a much more perceptible pro- minency.