Hereditary hypoplasia in man, due to degeneracy : the underlying basis of those cases having a hereditary origin, and the relation of this underlying cause to the functional neuroses, tuberculosis, infections and immunity / Charles P. Noble.

  • Noble, Charles P. (Charles Percy), 1863-1935.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Hereditary hypoplasia in man, due to degeneracy : the underlying basis of those cases having a hereditary origin, and the relation of this underlying cause to the functional neuroses, tuberculosis, infections and immunity / Charles P. Noble. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    plete or may be partial, and the least manifestation of it is the so-called pinhole os of Marion Sims, asso- ciated, as it is, with narrowness and anteflexion of the cervix. Puberty in the subnormal arrives, when it does arrive, not at 13 in this latitude, but at from 14 to 20, depending on the original defect in the ovum, aided, it may be, in particular cases, by .the environment of the child after its birth. Likewise, it will be found in each of the groups of cases that the condition may, as it is said, be acquired, rather than due to the causes of which we are treating. That is, it may be due to the diseases of a nutritional character, to the influence of acute disease, such as typhoid fever, or to some accident profoundly influencing the nervous system. Heretofore it has been said that these conditions are either con- genital or acquired. After marriage such subnormal girls are relatively sterile. Some do not become pregnant; they torment their husbands and worry their doctors, and then comes nervous prostration from worrying over the situation. Others become pregnant, and the womb is imperfectly developed, resulting either in abortions, in abnormal labors, or in lacerations; many of these women have puerperal infection. Then comes nervous prostration from having had this experience. Such women are mentally unstable and everybody says they are peculiar. They are not like other women; that is, they have hypo- plasia of their entire bodies. It is not merely arrested development of the pelvic organs, but arrested develop- ment of the body in general. Their bones and their muscles, their hearts and their arteries, and, most of all, their nervous system—central, spinal nerves and sympathetic—are imperfectly developed; that is, organs and parts are in a state of hypoplasia, or arrested evolu- tion. Such women very often have retrodisplacements, when they do not have anteflexion, and all have poor ligaments; round ligaments and uterosacrals, and the broad ligaments, and the Fallopian tubes, and the ovaries likewise are imperfectly developed—are in a state of hypoplasia. Many of these women have, at about the age of 11, what is called chlorosis, which is a part of this general situation—it belongs in this group. Even Virchow missed the point. He recognized the fact, but did not