Clinical report on ovarian and uterine diseases : with commentaries / by Robert Lee.

  • Lee, Robert, 1793-1877.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Clinical report on ovarian and uterine diseases : with commentaries / by Robert Lee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/352 (page 2)
    OF THE STRUCTURE nerves and absorbents. The remarkable changes produced in the intellectual and physical constitution of women, at the age of puberty, by the development of the ovaria, have been accurately described by Harvey in the following pas- sage, Nec minus notum est quanta virgini alteratio con- tingat, increscente primmn et tepefacto utero; ■ pubescit nempe, coloratior evadit, mamma; protuberant, pulchrior vultus renidet, splendent oculi, vox canora, incessus, gestus, scrmo, omnia decora hunt. , _ There are certain facts which seem to prove, that it is not to the influence of the uterus, but of the ovaria, that we are to attribute all the changes which take place in the female pelvis, in the mamma;, and uterine system, at the period of puberty; and it seems not improbable, from the following facts, that it is also to certain changes in the Graafian ve- sicles at the time of menstruation.'that all the phenomena of that singular process are to be referred. The case of a young woman who died at the age ot twenty- nine in whom the ovaria were wanting, was published by Mr Charles Pears, in the second part of the Transactions of the Royal Society of London, for 1S05, and the following appearances have been recorded:— Having ceased to grow at ten years of age, she was in stature not more than four feet six inches high. The breadth across the shoulders was as much as fourteen inches, but her pelvis measured only nine inches from the ossa ilia to the sacrum. Her breasts and nipples never enlarged more than in the male subject. She never menstruated; there was no appearance of hair on the pubis, nor were there any indications of puberty m mind or body at twenty-nine years of age. In the young woman whose ovaria were extirpated by Mr Pott, in an operation for inguinal hernia, menstruation ceased the voice became hoarse, the mammas shrunk, and hair appeared on the chin and upper lip. Before this period the female was stout, large-breasted, and menstruated regu- laiMr Yarrel has shown, that where there is a shrinking and shrivelling of the ovaria from disease m young birds, the hen assumes in many instances the plumage of the male. Thus, in several mules (hen birds with male plumage), the ovarium has been found variously diseased; sometimes the oviducts appear to have been inflamed, and adhesions to have taken place between their opposite sides, so that they become