Diseases of women : a clinical guide to their diagnosis and treatment / by George Ernest Herman.

  • Herman, G. Ernest (George Ernest), 1849-1914.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Diseases of women : a clinical guide to their diagnosis and treatment / by George Ernest Herman. 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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    From these four causes—because they affect very sensitive patients with nervous symptoms; because they are bound up with the emotional life of the patient; because they are often associated with nervous exhaustion from the strain of repro- duction ; and because a slight disease is often made into a great trouble by the patient's fear of the disease she thinks is coming—it results that the minor diseases of women are usually associated with many symptoms which in no way depend upon the local disease, their relation being only that of dependence upon a common cause. Supposed reflex symptoms.—For long it was the practice to treat diseases of women without, or with only imperfect, local examination. The introduction of methods of local in- vestigation led to the discovery of local disorders which were not before known. Thus the speculum led to the discovery of erosion on the cervix; the sound informed us of changes in the position of the womb other than visible descent. When these changes were discovered, the next step was to trace out the symptoms connected with them. It was found that in a number of cases nervous symptoms were associated with the local disease, and it was therefore supposed that these nervous symptoms were reflex effects of the local disease. It was found, further, that treatment of the local disease, either in a hospital or in a place not the patient's home, cured both local and reflex symptoms. Hence the theory seemed to be confirmed. This was the history of erosions of the cervix, the apparently wide-reaching effects of which will be found detailed in the works of Henry Bennett and Tilt; of flexions of the uterus, the supposed reflex effects of which may be studied in the writings of Graily Hewitt; and of other more recent cures. The manifold nature of these reflex symptoms has struck many persons; hence the phrase the Protean symptoms. It has also struck many people how closely the Protean symptoms due to one small local lesion resembled those due to another. Value of Matthews Duncan's teaching.—The great ser- vice which Matthews Duncan rendered to the gynaecology of his time was in clearly seeing, and helping others to see, that often the symptoms with local pelvic changes were not in the least dependent on them; that the patient's nervous condition