CHAPTER XVII.
ENDOMETRITIS OR CATARRHAL INFLAMMATION OF THE WOMB.
Endo means within, and metritis signifies womb and inflammation, and when all are combined, the compound term denotes inflammation of the lining membrane of the womb, which is the affection that I am now to consider.
It would be impossible to find a single person of middle age who has not experienced sometime during life the discomforts of a catarrh or cold of some part of the respiratory passages, whether in the head or bronchial tubes.
The mucous membranes are especially sensitive to noxious influences, and sound a timely note of warning by an acute catarrh, which, if heeded, will in many instances save the person from a dangerous, if not fatal sickness.
The adage, “Prevention is better than cure,” is one of the most truthful sayings in the English language, and, if persons would profit from the admonitions of a “slight cold,” many a fatal pneumonia or bronchitis could be averted.
What is true of the mucous membrane that is common to both sexes is true of that which is peculiar to the female organs alone.
There is no mucous membrane that is more liable to catarrhal inflammations than that lining the uterus. There never was a woman who was not some time in her life afflicted with a transient uterine catarrh. It may have been of so mild a form that the symptoms which it occasioned were hardly noticed, or, perhaps, ascribed to some other ailment.
There are several varieties of endometritis; some of these are based upon the length of time that the affection has lasted, while others owe their classification to the anatomical division of the uterus into body and cervix. Those that relate to the duration of the disease are either acute or chronic.