Volume 1

System of gynecology / by American authors ; edited by Matthew D. Mann.

Date:
1887-1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: System of gynecology / by American authors ; edited by Matthew D. Mann. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    3 When owino- to the suppression of the menses, any obstruction takes place in the os uteri, it is apt to prevent impregnation. 4. When impreo-nation does not take place, the veins of the uterus become so engorged with blood that they do not retain the semen ; or, on the contrary, the same effect may arise from profuse uienstruation, whereby the retentive faculty of the vessels is weakened and a return of the menstrual fluid in too great quantity may wash away the semen. 5. Prolapsus uteri, by rendering the mouth of the uterus hard and cal- lous, prevents impregnation. Among the Romans there is evidence that the diseases of woman received especial attention. Their knowledge was, however, mainly derived from Greece and Alexandria, their writings revealing none of the originality of thought and boldness of procedure which have always marked progress in this division of medicine. Celsus was a voluminous writer, but it is to be regretted that so much of such ])arts of his works as treated especially of the diseases of women have been lost as to leave us at best a very disjointed reference to the subject. Enough has, however, been preserved of his writings and of those of Galen to convince us that as early as the first century of the Chris- tian era the speculum, rediscovered by E6camier in 1816, was not unknown; that the vaginal touch was used as a means of diagnosis; and that ulceration of the womb and leucorrhoea in its several vari- eties had been recognized. In the excavations of Pompeii and Pler- culaneum, overwhelmed with lava from Mount Vesuvius A. D. 79, and remaining buried for nearly eighteen hundred years, there were found among, other surgical instruments, two specula, such as were probably in common use at the time of the catastrophe. Following the faint glimmer of light emitted from Rome, we have a period of almost absolute darkness extending over five hundred years, all of such history of the medicine of those years as may have been written having at last become extinct. At the end of this period we find at work in the library at Alexandria one iEtius, a Greek, whom the fame of that wonderful collection had probably attracted from his native land, although the fact that he refers occa- sionally in his writings to cases occurring under his own eye gives color to the belief that, besides delving in the accumulated lore, he also engaged in the practice of his profession. The writings of Jiltius, compilations chiefly from the Alexandrian collection, having fortu- nately been preserved, we are permitted to know through them some- thmg of the status of medicine in Egypt a millennium and a half ago. A study of these writings will open up a wonderful revelation to those who regard gynecology as pcciuliarly a development of these later times. They consist of four books {tdrabihlm), each of which is in turn subdivided into many chapters. The fourth discourse of the