GEO. C. PITZER, M. D.,

Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the American Medical College,
St. Louis; Clinical Lecturer at the City Hospital, St. Louis; Author of "Electricity
in Medicine and Surgery;" Author of "Direct Medication," and "Alcohol
as a Food, a Medicine, a Poison, and as a Luxury."

VOL. XIV., 1886.

ST. LOUIS, MO.:

Commercial Printing Company, 200 and 202 S. Fourth Street, cor. Elm.

1886.

CATALOGUED, E. H. B.

3/2

MAR 26 1887

ART. I. Oophorectomy. - BY HENRY F. BEAM, M. D., JOHNSTOWN, PA.

Extirpation of normal ovaries, which has received the name of Battey's operation, or that of normal ovariotomy, is now one of the legitimate operations in gynæcological surgery. It has been performed so often during the past few years that there is scarcely any doubt as to the possibility of terminating it successfully, and of saving the greater number of patients. In 1863 Koeberle performed this operation, but until 1872 no gynecologist had proposed extraction of apparently healthy ovaries for the purpose of modifying disorders of innervation, the starting point of which seemed to be in the organs themselves. In this year Battey performed what he calls normal ovariotomy, "with the object of producing an artificial change in the conditions of existence, and of suppressing maladies which may depend on them, such as neuralgia, dysmenorrhoea, hysteria and mental derangement." The indications for the operation, as laid down by Dr. Battey, are "absence of the uterus and serious permanent disorders caused by the presence of the ovaries; obliteration of the uterus and vagina beyond the possibility of restoration; the exceptional gravity of nervous, hysteriform and epileptiform disorders, depending on an ovarian affection, and resisting all ordinary means of treatment; mental and physical sufferings produced by congestion of the ovaries which have resisted all treatment." Another