Femina, A Work for Every Woman

by John A. Miller

When from neglected or improper treatment, the acute inflammation is not checked, so as to restore the organ to its normal condition, the inflammatory process assumes a chronic character. As inflammation is an abnormal vital activity, which results in the proliferation or building up of fibrous tissue, it must be naturally inferred that if the inflammatory process is active in an organ for a considerable length of time, the tissues of this organ must grow or increase, so as to augment its size and weight. This is indeed so, hence the other names that have been given to this disease to distinguish it from the acute or transient form, all imply tissue growth, as hypergenesis of the connective tissue, engorgement or inflammatory hypertrophy of the uterus.

The entire organ may be thus affected, or it may be limited to either one or the other anatomical divisions of the uterus, namely, the body or the neck.

Of all the different varieties of chronic inflammation of the womb, that of the neck or cervix is the most frequently met. This is due to the fact that in married women and those who have born children the cervix of the womb is exposed to mechanical injury from coition, friction against the vaginal walls in walking and from lacerations during delivery.

The body of the womb is further removed from all these mechanical agencies to which the cervix is exposed, for the body is within the abdomen of the female, and for that reason it is less liable to be injuriously affected by influences that cause inflammatory enlargement. But notwithstanding all this, it is a common disease.

A great many cases of womb complaint that do not yield to ordinary treatment are really of this nature, but owing to carelessness or incompetency are never recognized. The symptoms of this disease, which are obstinate leucorrhœa, falling of the womb or displacements, are mistaken and treated for the disease itself. Women who suffer with this complaint are extremely liable to go on for quite a while feeling comparatively well and in hopes that they are recovering, when some extra exertion or exposure to cold brings on a relapse, which lights up an acute inflammatory process. This passes into the old troublesome disease and this resumes its chronic form. After a repetition of the general routine treatment, the patient may again live under the delusion that she is going to get well only to have her hopes blasted by a sudden reappearance of the former painful symptoms, that are alike discouraging to herself and a puzzle to her friends.

The cause of inflammatory enlargement of the uterus is usually connected with parturition or abortion.

There never can be either the one or the other without more or less vascular activity, which is essential to the repair of the womb and its restoration to its physiological or healthy condition. All the uterine tissues are at this time in a high state of irritability, and if there is a natural predisposition to inflammatory diseases, then the slightest obstacle to an uninterrupted recovery will kindle an inflammatory action, that will fasten itself on the uterus. In the very nature of things this results in a deposition of inflammatory material, with a consequent increase of intermuscular fibrous tissue which increases the size and weight of the uterus.

What our mothers termed in former days “a bad getting up,” that is, when women get up from their confinement weakly and with more or less pain and dragging in the pelvis on walking or the slightest exertion, is generally owing to the above-described condition. This disease is now almost as common as ever. I can always trace these cases to a confinement or an abortion.

It is very rare that it is due to a depreciation of vital forces from improper food, over-exertion, a prolonged nervous depression or a constitutional tendency to tubercle, scrofula or some other hereditary diathesis, although these undoubtedly predispose the patient to the disease.