A handbook of uterine therapeutics and of diseases of women / by Edward John Tilt.

  • Tilt, Edward John, 1815-1893.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A handbook of uterine therapeutics and of diseases of women / by Edward John Tilt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    treme—frigidity. I occasionally attend three ladies, wlio are handsome, well-formed, happily married, and without any tangible imperfection of the sexual organs, yet who are com- pletely indifferent to connexion, which neither gives pain nor pleasure, and they have never conceived. In two other cases where I can find nothing amiss, connexion gives little or no pleasure, acts as a poison to the nervous system, and causes a state of unconsciousness for hours, followed by headache and utter prostration, which does not wear off for several days. One of these ladies has been married ten years and has one child, the other fifteen, and has no family. In these cases the toxic influence is less when connexion is preceded by a more perfect orgasm; hence the read^ir will deduce the advice to be given in similar cases. Constitutional Cachexia.—Medical inquiries are consti- tuted by links so connected as to form a perfect circle: discussion must break the circle somewhere, and if I first expatiated on the more apparent causes of sterility, it was not that I meant to deny that it may be caused by a bad constitution. Constitutional debility may cause some of those diseased conditions of the reproductive organs to which sterility has been attributed, and may accompany them all, rendering their effects more certain. If the con- stitution rallies spontaneously, or by the use of medicines, conception may take place in spite of the persistence of uterine inflammation. In some women, the reproductive organs are to all appearance perfect in form and function ; and as there is nothing to explain their sterility but confirmed debility, they become pregnant if they can recover their strength : hence it follows that all the appliances of tonic treatment should be brought into action. I am not aware how far a scrofulous constitution is a cause of sterility, and should it be so, it would only suggest tonic treatment. Syphilis is an obvious cause ; for as it pervades the system, the ovule may become blighted in the ovary itself, which generally prevents concep-