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

  • Herman G. Ernest (George Ernest), 1849-1914.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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 Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    31/918 (page 11)
    that the “ Protean symptoms ” seem to be a frequent com- plication only of trivial conditions. In the graver diseases of the female sexual organs, such as cancer, fibroids, ovarian tumours, they are not conspicuous. The explanation,—The “ Protean symptoms ” so often ac- company trivial local changes because women whose nervous systems are weak notice trivial symptoms, and go to doctors more readily than women who are strong. Diseases of the female genitals produce definite local symptoms, and in healthy women cause no reflex symptoms. The “ Protean symptoms ” come not from the uterus or ovaries or peri- neum, but from a weak nervous system. An erosion on the cervix does not hurt the nervous system, but a weak nervous system draws attention to an erosion on the cervix. Nervous women resist pain less ; they brood more over their ailments, fear more for the future, and are less able to judge calmly. Hence they feel more acutely; they increase their local troubles by fixing attention on them; they imagine that they are going to have other disease; and they are easily persuaded by unwise doctors to submit to protracted treat- ment, however disagreeable and unsuccessful it may be. Why wrong views have prevailed.—The theories that the “ Protean symptoms ” are caused by these trivial local changes have gained acceptance because treatment of these local changes has seemed to do good. It has done good in three ways. (1) Continual local pain or discomfort makes a weak nervous system still weaker; and if a cause of local discomfort can be removed, the patient will improve, although the local trouble is only a part of the disease. (2) Anxiety about supposed disease makes a nervous patient worse; and if anxiety is stilled by an assurance that the disease is cured or being cured, the patient is made happier and better. (3) By suggestion, as, for instance, the procuring of sleep by the hypodermic injection of water. Doctors who have taken wrong views of uterine pathology have often been judicious in their treatment of their patient’s other troubles, and have given the credit due to such treatment to their uterine maltreatment. Thus a physician has been known to take into hospital overworked shopgirls and governesses who were anjcmic, costive, and