The British Gynaecological Journal Volume 19 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 Excerpt: ... SUMMARY OF GYNECOLOGY, INCLUDING OBSTETRICS. NOVEMBER, 1903. The Relations Of Functional Nervous Diseases To The Female Genital Organs In Regard To Their Etiology, Diagnosis And Treatment. Kroenig, Jena (Muenchener m. Wchns., No. 40, S. 1749, 1903), the first reporter upon this subject at the Seventy-fifth Congress of German Naturalists and Physicians, said: "Diseases of the genital organs, especially such as are accompanied by severe loss of blood or prolonged inflammation of the adnexa, e.g., gonorrhoeal pelvic peritonitis, may be the direct cause of profound exhaustion of the nervous system and so of neurasthenia, and even the physiological function of the generative organs, repeated pregnancy and labour, may be a predisposing factor in the occurrence of neurasthenia. There can hardly be any agreement in opinions as to the influence the physiological functions and pathological conditions of the organs of generation may exert upon the occurrence of hysteria as long as the ideas of authors as to what is meant by that term are so very different. Even in the narrower acceptation of hysteria as a psychosis it must be admitted that clinical observation shows that diseases of the genitalia often cause hysteria to become manifest in cases in which previously it has been entirely latent. The physiological course of the functions of these organs acts in the same way as at the beginning of puberty, during menstruation, childbirth, and the climacterium. The idea that in women deficient sexual intercourse has an unfavourable influence on the nervous system and becomes the source of hysterical or neurasthenic trouble may be entirely rejected. Sexual abuses, such as masturbation and the prevention of conception, contribute far less frequently in women than in men to h...