On Obstinate Menorrhagia.

Abstract

UTKRIE haemorrhage, unconnected with pregnancy or parturition, occasionally assumes a rebellious form not to be understood by the ordinary doctrinal explanations of its pathology. Menorrhagias (or rather metrorhagias) are said to be active, passive, functional, or symptomatic, according as they are considered to depend on general vascular derangement, on diathesis, or on morbid states of the womb itself. The remedies most useful, are such as correspond with these views. Thus cooling purgatives, drastics, antimonials, bleeding, astringents, have each had their advocates. The same may be said of the series of special anti-menorrhagics-bitartrate of potash, oxide of silver, Indian hemp, digitalis, Cayenne pepper, cinnamon, &c., and of the removal from the womb itself of some tangible exciting cause, as polypus in-one or other of its innumerable varieties. ' The majority of menorrhagias yield to one or other of the above remedies; but some do not. The two following cases, selected from a large number which have come under my notice at the Samaritan Hospital during the last four years, in my opinion, are instructive examples of this intractable class:— CASE I.-A woman, aged thirty-six, married, came to the hospital two years and a half ago, having the ordinary appear