Practical manual of diseases of women and uterine therapeutics : for students and practitioners / by H. Macnaughton Jones.

  • Macnaughton-Jones, H. (Henry), 1844-1918.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical manual of diseases of women and uterine therapeutics : for students and practitioners / by H. Macnaughton Jones. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    162/712 (page 116)
    critical autumn-time, when this fertilizing process begins to wane, and gradually ceases altogether—the period of the menopause, from forty-five to fifty, or thereabouts, when again we find her subject to local and remote congestions, cerebral affections, vicarious haemorrhages from various organs, cardiac complications; at the same time occur exagge- rated reflex disturbances and nervous ' discharging lesions.' These accompany that ' change of life ' during which are developed those traits of womanhood which stamp with peculiar and characteristic features the period antecedent to the winter of old age. It is not, however, to the change in the uterine mucous membrane, and the periodical hypersernia of the uterine tissues with the consequent flow of blood, that we are to look for an explanation of these phases and phenomena. It is to the antecedent act of ovulation. True, a woman may menstruate (in so far as a mere periodical flow is concerned) without ovaries, but then it is most probably the mere perpetuation of a habit. As a physiological act it has lost its prime significance. It is on the ovaries rather than on the uterus that the gynecologist has to concentrate his attention, in investigating the normal, and in treating the abnormal menstrual molimen. We do not find any accurate explanation of many of the pheno- mena of menstrual life. There is a something in these not to be explained by any anatomical or physiological facts connected with ovulation. The effects of its mysterious influence on the entire being of the woman may not be measured by any descriptive language. The explanation is not in the swollen and sensitive ovary, or in any changes that occur in the parenchyma, in the maturation and rupture of the Graafian follicle, or in the accompanying congestion of the Fallopian tube, or in the swelling proliferation and dis- integration of the epithelium uterine mucous membrane. This strange coincidence, of a mental and physical state being closely dependent upon the healthful discharge of