The change of life in health and disease : a practical treatise on the nervous and other affections incidental to women at the decline of life / by Edward John Tilt.

  • Tilt, Edward John, 1815-1893.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The change of life in health and disease : a practical treatise on the nervous and other affections incidental to women at the decline of life / by Edward John Tilt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    » consequences of mismanagement or misapprehension have be- come startling, those fatal mutations are attributed to some trivial cause, and the victim passes away to the sound of the passing bell, and no increase of knowledge, acquired by such a mournful experience, stands in the way of the next victim to a management as unwise and as thoughtless. The complaints, adds Dr. Meigs, which women at the change of life often make, are frequently hushed with the un- satisfactory reply that such complaints are owing to the change of life, and are likely to cease whenever the change shall be- come complete. A physician has no moral right, by his opin- ion, to put to sleep the anxieties of his patient, and to save himself the trouble of thinking by so concise and unphilosoph- ical a mode of proceeding. Whenever, therefore, a female, at this period, which is universally admitted to be a critical and dangerous time for her, comes to complain of symptoms refer- able to some morbid condition of the reproductive tissues, it is clearly our duty to give a considerate attention to her case, and not to dismiss her until our judgment should be fully sat- isfied as to the therapeutical or hygienical indications of the case. So much for pathology; and with regard to the physiological results of this great change in comparatively healthy women, I will say, with M. Flourens, that from forty to fifty-five is a period of invigoration for both sexes—a period in which the deep interior work proceeding in all our tissues renders them firmer, and thereby insures a more perfect performance of all the functions. This change is insensibly worked out in man, but in woman the passage is often perilous, and the result is more marked. The great improvement in the general health subsequent to the change of life is a notorious fact. Although the phenomena of the change of life are principally due to ovarian involution, it may be helped by other changes pro- ceeding in both sexes. For instance, Sir W. Jenner has lately stated, in one of his remarkable lectures, that the spleen, the lymphatic glands, and Peyer's patches all suffer involution at the same period of life—about fifty. At that time the spleen grows smaller, the lymphatic glands waste, and Pe}rer's patches smooth down and lose their peculiar structure.