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.

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    that in all such cases, when the most delicate probe can be made to pass, the difficulty is easily to be overcome by the daily use of the bougie, beginning with one of a small size, and gradually enlarging it till the orifice has acquired a proper magnitude. It is not necessary to do more than pass the bougie through the stricture, to retain it there about a minute and no longer, when it will be found that a larger one will be admitted on the same terms the next day; and so on until one sufficiently large can be passed. Its use repeated afterwards from time to time, say once in two, three or four weeks, will per- fect the cure.—M.] Where the constriction or occlusion of the canal extends through- out a great part, of its tractus, and especially where the urine finds no other outlet, the child must inevitably perish if not opportunely suc- coured, and even here there is but one means of rescue, and that by a very doubtful operation: I mean the puncture of the bladder by means of a bistoury or a delicate trocar, which should be plunged into the point where the orifice of the urethra ought to be, and thence conducted to the cavity of the bladder. Should the fear of giving an erroneous direction to the instrument or any other motive lead to a rejection of this operation, then there should be no hesitation as to making a puncture of the bladder through the vagina or rectum, and should the structure of those passages be of such a nature as to oppose these methods, recourse might be had to a puncture above the sym- physis pubis. It is to be confessed that in these cases the infants are generally lost, even where we have succeeded in re-establishing the course of the urine by any of the methods just pointed out. In order to conclude what we had to say upon the subject of pre- ternatural conformation of the vulva and its dependencies, we must add, that although the labia pudendi may possibly be wanting as a congenital defect, they may also be destroyed by gangrene or cor- roding ulcers. In the latter case the lesion is often accompanied by occlusion of the vagina or meatus urinarius, which will require the treatment we have already pointed out. FAULTY CONFORMATION OF THE VAGINA. The deformities of the vagina, whether congenite or accidental, and that are susceptible of cure by surgical treatment, are, imperforation, obliteration, obturation, congenital narrowness, and stricture or con- traction. IMPFRFORATION OF THE VAGINA. Imperforation of the vagina has been noticed by several of the ancient medical writers. Hippocrates speaks of it in his first book of the Diseases of Women, but points out no treatment for the case. Aristotle, who was preceptor to Alexander the Great, and who lived three centuries before the Christian era, teaches us that some girls have the vagina closed at birth and until the period for menstruation ; that the blood then gradually secreted gives rise to violent pains that