The important and special function of the ovaries—that of secreting and excreting the Graäfian follicles or ovisacs—and their monthly engorgements are the causes of many of the diseases to which they are subject. Hence it is that affections of the ovary, being due most commonly to perverted function, rarely occur before puberty.
Malformations.
Absence of the ovaries is a congenital condition very rarely met with. It is usually associated either with the absence also of the womb or with an imperfect development of the other portions of the sexual apparatus. The breasts will be flat, the vagina generally imperforate, the vulva small, the pubic hair absent, and sexual feeling wanting. Menstruation never takes place. Very commonly the growth of the body is arrested, and the stature is dwarfed to that of a child. Occasionally, however, there is an approach to the masculine type in the size, the figure, the voice, and in the growth of hair on the face and on the body.
An arrested development or a rudimentary condition of the ovaries is a more common malformation than the preceding one. The womb is then infantile in size, and the vulva and vagina are small and the pelvis is narrow. Puberty either fails to take place or it is postponed. When menstruation is present it is scant and appears at long intervals. General development is impaired, and the figure and mental characteristics may be those of advanced childhood. Sexual feeling is either wholly absent or very imperfect.
DIAGNOSIS.—Whenever the ovaries are wanting, their absence cannot be positively made out by a digital examination of the parts, for even fully-formed ovaries often elude the finger. The diagnosis depends mainly on the symptoms previously given. If the ovaries are rudimentary, the finger passed high up the rectum while the woman is anæsthetized will sometimes recognize them. But the diagnosis rests usually on some manifestation of puberty, and the greater these manifestations the greater the curability.
TREATMENT.—For the complete absence of the ovaries all treatment is of course useless. Whenever these organs are in a rudimentary condition more can be done for the woman, but success is by no means assured. Every treatment that tones up the body is of service. The rest-cure, with its accessories of massage, general faradization, and over-feeding, promises much. Electricity has done good when one pole is applied directly over an ovary and the other pole placed either on the sacrum or on the cervix uteri. It is still more efficacious when the reophore in the form of a properly insulated sound is passed into the uterine cavity. Should the interrupted current fail to do good, the galvanic current may cautiously be tried.
From the vascular and nervous kinship between the ovaries and the womb all stimulants to the latter tend to invite blood to the former, and from this flux may come growth. It is therefore good practice to irritate the womb by tents, by applications of iodine and of silver to its cavity, and especially by the use of galvanic stems. The marriage relations sometimes quicken dormant ovaries into life, and development, followed by pregnancy, has been the result. But the remedy is a hazardous one, for if the sexual sense be not awakened, as often it will not, the union leads to much unhappiness.
Inflammation of the Ovary; Ovaritis.
Acute inflammation of the ovary rarely exists per se, but it is by no means an infrequent accompaniment of pelvic peritonitis and pelvic cellulitis, the causes of each being the same. It is then so masked by the greater inflammation that its symptoms are lost in the general ones. Following the same course as that of pelvic inflammations, it begins with fibrinous exudation and ends either in resolution or in suppuration, or in chronic hypertrophy.
The TREATMENT of this inflammation is the same as that of pelvic inflammation—viz. rest, poultices, vaginal injections of hot water, and morphia and quinia in large doses. Sometimes the local abstraction of blood will be useful. Should pus form, it must be evacuated by the aspirator, and preferably per vaginam. After such an inflammation, and especially if caused by gonorrhoea, the ovary usually remains permanently injured, its functions being crippled by fibrous bands, adhesions, hardening of its stroma, and thickening of its investing peritoneum. If both ovaries be thus affected, sterility inevitably ensues.