On uterine and ovarian inflammation : and on the physiology and diseases of menstruation / by Edward John Tilt.

Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On uterine and ovarian inflammation : and on the physiology and diseases of menstruation / by Edward John Tilt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    INTRODUCTION. ell acquainted with the history of medical science will admit the “ mighty governance of names/' and it should be the aim of all writers to withstand, as much as possible, the encroachments of language on the reality of facts, and to abstain from using terms which may fetter the understanding and lead to erroneous notions and liap-hazard practice. If taxed with exaggeration, I would refer my readers to Sir C. M. Clarke, who says, “ On no subject, perhaps, have there been more erroneous notions entertained, or more injurious directions given, than on that of diseased menstruatiou. Prejudice has occupied the place of Science, and a popular nostrum has been exhibited, often without, aud sometimes with, the concurrence of the practitioner. As, therefore, it is owing to the erroneous notions conveyed by vicious de- nomination that the treatment of diseases of menstruation has been either the injudicious use of “ the whip and spur, or else a no less fatal inaction, I shall endeavour to give greater precision to common language by using only the terms Amenorrhoea and Dysmenorrhoea, &c., when, from the impossibility of finding out any organic reason to ex- plain the menstrual perturbation they indicate, such a con- dition may be considered essential and depending upon some unseen modification of the nervous influence presiding over the menstrual function. For similar reasons I prefer the term ovaritis instead of that generally used in this country —inflammation of the uterine appendages. I am fully aware that inflammation of the ovaria is often attended by that of the cellular tissue in which they are imbedded, by that of the Fallopian tubes by which their purposes are subserved, and of the serous membrane by which they are covered; but I object to the term alluded to, because in using it one loses sight of an organ, the importance of which is paramount, and the inflammation of which is not unfrequent, and generally entails that of the oviducts and cellular tissue. I object also to the term appendages, or productions, of the womb, because, in the hierarchy of our organs, the ovary ranks above the uterus, which is, in fact, as much the ap- pendage of the ovaries as the urinary bladder is that of the kidneys; these hollow organs are equally subsidiary in their different purposes to the function of the respective glandular