The Ovaries

Categories: Diseases of Women

They are analogues, anatomically, of the testes in the male.
They are two egg-shaped bodies situated one on each side of the womb on

the posterior aspect of the broad ligament, below and behind the fallopian

tubes; each is connected by its anterior margin to the broad ligament;

internally to the womb by the ovarian ligament, externally to the

fringe-like extremity of the fallopian tubes by a short cord-like

ligament. They are white in color; about one and one-half inches long,

three-quarters of an inch wide and one-third of an inch thick and weigh

about two drams each.



The ovarian ligament extends from the inner side of the ovary to the

superior angle of the (Uterus) womb. The round ligaments, two in number,

are about five inches long and are situated between the layers of the

broad ligament, one on each side of the womb in front and below the

fallopian tube. They pass forward and outward from the womb through the

internal abdominal ring, along the groin canal and out at the external

abdominal ring.



I have given a lengthy description of these organs; I think it will repay

a careful reading. To understand a disease one should understand the

organs that are subject to the disease.







CAUSES OF DISEASES OF WOMEN.



Dr. Child says among primitive people, woman is notoriously free from many

of the diseases to which her sister in our present-day civilization is

especially prone. As we ascend the scale of civilization, departing from a

natural and adopting an artificial mode of life we find nature enacts due

penalties for the transgression of her laws. The female among savage

tribes has every advantage and opportunity to develop physical perfection,

and her endurance suffers little, if any, by comparison with the male. How

different is our modern system when the young girls are sent early to

school and subjected daily to long hours of study, often in badly

ventilated class-rooms, for nine months in the year, and this at the time

of puberty, one of the most important periods of their life when they need

plenty of out-door exercise. Surely, as Goodell says, "If woman is to be

thus stunted and deformed to meet the ambitious intellectual demands of

the day, if her health must be sacrificed upon the altar of her education,

the time may come when to renew the worn out stock of the Republic it will

be necessary for our young men to make matrimonial excursions into lands

where educational theories are unknown."