Medical and surgical lectures on the diseases of women, a clinical and systematic treatise

Front matter

Class ftJK*,

Book_J

Copyright^ .

Preface To The Sixth Edition

For more than a year past the fifth edition of this work has been out of print. It therefore became incumbent upon the author to revise and to correct it, to withdraw a portion of its old matter and to substitute new paragraphs and new lectures to the end that it might be in every way more complete and satisfactory than before.

In the present edition the briefer articles and the new cuts have been interspersed through the volume wherever they were needed to modernize it and the better to illustrate the text. Many new cases have been added and the clinical character of the work has been preserved throughout.

Of the new lectures that were not included in former editions there are, beside the Introductory Lecture, two upon the Pathology of Ovarian Tumors; one on Explorative Laparotomy and Tapping; one upon Ovariotomy; one on the After Treatment and the Results of Ovariotomy, and one upon the Diseases of the Uterine Appendages, including the Battey-Tait operation. The surgical treatment of Lacerations of the Perineum and of the Uterine Cervix, and also of Uterine Cancer have been reconsidered and treated of in the light of increased hospital and special experience.

The text, which is closely printed and compact, does not discuss those theoretical and historical questions which are better suited for separate monographs, or for an encyclopaedia, and which manifestly are out of place at the bedside or in the clinical amphitheatre. All this literary baggage, with which gynecology is being encumbered, is laid aside for what is more direct, important and useful. The result is submitted with a sincere regret that, even in its amended form, the work is not more perfect and complete;

4 PKEFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION.

but also with the hope that it may continue to be as useful and as acceptable in the future as it has been in the past.

The thanks of the author are again due to Dr. Belle L. Reynolds, who for the past eight years has been his faithful assistant in the practice of this specialty, for the careful supervision of the work as it passed through the press.

New Years, Chicago, 1888,

1823 Michigan Avenue.

Contents

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.

LECTURE I.

THE SEVEN CRITICAL PERIODS IN THE LIFE OF WOMAN.