A

MODIFIED RING PESSARY

FOR THE

TREATMENT AND CURE OF ANTEFLEXION AND ANTEVERSION OF THE UTERUS.

BY

HOMER O. HITCHCOCK, M. D.

A MODIFIED RING PESSARY FOR THE TREATMENT AND CURE OF ANTEFLEXION AND ANTEVERSION OF THE UTERUS.

PERHAPS there is no displacement of the uterus that has so baffled the efforts of physicians to remove it as anteflexion.

Pessary after pessary has been invented and presented to the profession with high claims for their efficacy. But still this displacement is the dread of almost every physician, and the constant, painful perplexity of many a patient.

Perhaps of no disease is the Scripture record more true, "She had suffered many things of many physicians, and yet was nothing better."

In the winter of 1863, I was consulted by a young unmarried lady from a distant part of the State, on account of a disease from which she had suffered for nearly four years. She had received the advice of many a physician of high and low degree-had worn the ring pessary-the globe pessary-the horseshoe pessary-the double S pessary and the intra-uterine stem pessary--and the common sponge.

The last physician she had consulted was a professor in a large and popular medical school, who had pronounced her disease to be inflammation, with great thickening, of the posterior wall of the bladder.

Upon careful examination with the uterine sound, I discovered that the instrument, in order to enter the womb beyond the cervix, had to be curved to an arc of a circle of about one inch radius, and the handle had to be carried back nearly to the os coccygis, and, that what had been taken as thickening of the bladder, could be entirely removed by keeping the instrument well crowded up and bringing the handle forward.

The patient gave the history of frequent inflammation of the uterus and ovaries, and there appeared to be quite strong adhesions binding the womb in its assumed place. She had had too frequent menstruation--profuse and intolerably painful--frequent and painful micturition.

VOL. XV.-8