The sexual life of woman in its physiological, pathological and hygienic aspects

by E. Heinrich Kisch

The extirpation of healthy ovaries, or at any rate, of ovaries which are not notably enlarged, is known as oophorectomy (spaying, Battey’s operation, in Germany, castration). It dates from the year 1869 (Koeberlé); but in the strictly modern sense the operation was first performed by Hegar in the year 1872. [Lawson Tait removed both ovaries for pain in October, 1871. Battey’s first operation of this kind was successfully performed on August 17th, 1872; this was three weeks subsequent to the first performance of the operation by Hegar of Freiburg. But Hegar’s patient died from the operation, and Hegar did not publish the case at the time—Transl.] The aim of ovariotomy is to remove an ovarian cystoma; if the other, apparently healthy, ovary is removed, it is with the object of removing an ovarian tumour in the initial stage. Oophorectomy has an altogether different purpose, namely, to relieve or cure pathological manifestations in other organs which are believed to depend on the periodical recurrence of ovulation, to cure them by instituting a premature menopause. At one period, when overzealous operators performed oophorectomy for the supposed relief of comparatively unimportant nervous affections, and the statistics of the operation began to assume gigantic proportions, operative sterility actually came to play no inconspicuous part on the stage of sterility in general. But a reaction inevitably followed; severe diseases were alone considered as furnishing sufficient indications for the operation; of late it has been performed chiefly in cases in which the primary disorder has already rendered the occurrence of pregnancy impossible, or at any rate very unlikely, or, finally, if probable, yet to be avoided, on account of the dangers it would entail. In short, the fertility of women is no longer seriously threatened by this operation.

Some years ago, I was consulted by a beautiful married woman, 26 years of age, of a blooming and healthy aspect. When a young girl, she had suffered every month at the time of the menstrual flow from violent vomiting, accompanied by various spasmodic troubles. Just at this time, oophorectomy was the fashionable operation for the relief of nervous troubles; this girl was subjected to the operation, and the vomiting at the periods ceased, but the other nervous symptoms persisted without alleviation—indeed were at times worse than before. Since then, she had married a man belonging to the upper circles of society; and now, after living for four years in sterile wedlock, she came to me to ask my advice as to whether anything could be done to enable her to have a child! Two other cases have come within my own knowledge, in which women whose ovaries had been removed on account of nervous troubles, had subsequently married, and felt most unhappy owing to their hopeless state of sterility.

It is impossible to make even an approximate estimate of the number of women who in recent years have had their ovaries removed during the period of sexual maturity, and who have thus been made the subjects of operative sterility; nor is it possible to ascertain in what proportion of cases the healthy ovaries, the normal female reproductive glands, have been removed for the problematical relief of nervous troubles or of uterine haemorrhage, and in what proportion of cases there has existed a genuine indication, owing to the presence of fibromyoma of the uterus, for the induction of an artificial and premature menopause. Unquestionably, the number of women thus operated on during the menacme is by no means a small one. In a work by Hermes, “On the Results of Oophorectomy in Cases of Myoma of the Uterus,” Archiv für Gynecologie, 1894, we find that, among 55 women whose ovaries were removed on account of myoma of the uterus, there were 52 who were between the ages of 21 and 45, i. e., in the period of sexual maturity. The assumption that all these patients were already sterile before the operation, on account of a degenerate condition of the uterine annexa, cannot be justified.

Keppler, indeed, puts forward a very remarkable defence of the removal of the ovaries of women who are competent to become mothers, asserting that such oophorectomy offers no obstacle to marriage, and that many women who have been operated on in this manner are extremely happy in conjugal life. Marriage with a wife whose ovaries have been removed is the ideal Malthusian marriage, the one way in which Malthusianism can be practised without endangering the health and life-happiness of the participators!

Another danger soon appeared, one which threatened the fertility of women to an even greater extent, in the form of operations on the uterine annexa—the first salpingotomy was performed by Hegar in 1877. As knowledge advanced of the various diseases of the Fallopian tubes, salpingitis, hydrosalpinx, and pyosalpinx, whilst at the same time the development of the antiseptic method rendered operative gynecology continually bolder and bolder in its undertakings, there was disclosed an extensive field for radical measures in removal of the tubes, generally combined with removal of the ovaries, since these latter organs commonly were found to have suffered from association in the destructive inflammatory process. The operation of salpingo-oophorectomy soon became a very common one; and since patients with diseased tubes are for the most part still comparatively young, in the period of sexual maturity, there arose a new and frequent variety of operative sterility, and one which the zeal of American gynecologists made especially common on the other side of the Atlantic. An American gynecologist, indeed, has sarcastically observed that “It is the dish-full of excised tubes that shows the master gynecologist”; and Landau has been impelled to lament that “salpingotomy has been performed on a very large number of women who have complained of nothing more serious than uterine haemorrhages, or of insignificant pains, and even on some women who have come to the gynecologist with no other complaint than that—they are sterile”! Fritsch, also, writing of the too rapidly formed diagnosis “tumor of the annexa,” and the consequent resort to operation, remarks: “I know many a happy mother who at one time had worn every variety of pessary, had been through every kind of ‘cure,’ and had visited every accessible spa; until, at last, she came to consult me, with the express wish to have her ovaries removed. Latterly, she had been advised to this course by every physician she had consulted. I agreed, in such cases, to perform the operation, with the stipulation that first of all, for the space of an entire year, the patient should not see a single doctor, should visit no spa, should take no medicine, and, in short, should pay no attention whatever to her health. The success of this course of ‘treatment’ was often extraordinary. As soon as the reproductive organs were left in peace, recovery ensued.” The conservative tendencies of the surgery of the last decade, have manifested themselves also in the department of gynecology, for the happy protection of woman and her reproductive capacity. Operative measures are now commonly restricted to the relief of certain severe forms of disease of the uterine annexa; in cases of chronic inflammation of the annexa, the surgeon often contents himself with dividing or breaking down the adhesions, and leaves the organs in situ; even in cases of bilateral disease, one tube only may be removed; whilst in the most recent method of all, after opening the abdomen, and separating the pelvic organs from their adhesions, an aperture is made in the closed tube, and this artificial ostium is brought into apposition with the ovary by the insertion of sutures. In a word, surgeons have come to realize that they have in the past been too ready to sterilize their patients by the performance of double salpingo-oophorectomy, and are much more reluctant than formerly to sacrifice the ovaries and the Fallopian tubes.

Porro’s operation is another cause of operative sterility, excision of the ovaries being combined with the partial excision of the uterus, whereas sterility was seldom the consequence of the older method of Caesarian section. Indeed, Porro’s operation has been extolled precisely on this account, that, indicated as it is for the relief of extremely difficult labour, it renders it impossible for the same difficulty and danger ever to recur.

The classical operation of Caesarian section, if the patient makes a favourable recovery, does not involve sterility, unless in very exceptional cases (as in one described by Lecluyse, in which, after the Caesarian section, a communication persisted between the uterine cavity and the cavity of the abdomen, through which the semen passed during coitus). Occasionally, also, in performing the older operation, the operator has thought it right to prevent the future recurrence of pregnancy by adding an oophorectomy to the primary operation.

Pregnancy and parturition are still possible after the healing of spontaneous or traumatic ruptures of the uterus; but it must be remembered that after such serious injuries, as after extensive operative procedures on the pelvic organs, widespread peritoneal inflammation is apt to occur, with perimetritic and parametritic exudations, leading commonly to sterility.

Amputation of the vaginal portion of the cervix, an operation sometimes undertaken for the relief of sterility in cases of hypertrophy of the cervix, may on the other hand lead to sterility in cases in which a cicatricial stenosis of the cervical canal results from the operation.

By the too frequent application of caustics to the cervical canal, or by the employment of these agents in too powerful a form, occlusion of the os externum may be caused, or even adhesion of the opposing walls of the vagina just below the cervix, thus giving rise to sterility. Rough use, also, of the uterine sound, and maladroit and violent gynecological massage, have often enough been responsible for the occurrence of sterility, by giving rise to perimetritic inflammation. Landau enumerates among the causes of intrapelvic abscesses, “whereby the specific functions of womanhood are nullified in consequence of degeneration of the tubes or the ovaries,” “certain therapeutic procedures,” and more especially, intra-uterine therapy, (the use of the sound, curettage, injections, cauterization), and operations on the cervix or the vagina, on which intrapelvic inflammation and even suppuration has ensued. How easily pelvic peritonitis and its consequences lead to sterility in women, has been shown many times in the course of our exposition of this subject.