Among pathological conditions giving rise to amenorrhoea it would seem that disease of the ovaries should occupy the first rank in frequency and importance. The reverse is the truth. The ovaries are rarely inflamed, and when so amenorrhoea is not always the result. They are frequently the seat of cystic degeneration, producing tumors of large size, yet so long as but a small portion of one of the organs remains unaffected Graäfian vesicles may still be furnished and menstruation continue. It is by the influence of remote pathological conditions that the menstrual flow is most frequently restrained, and especially by those general affections known as cachexiæ, all of which exhibit marked depression and low grade of vital power and activity, if not more pronounced pathological processes. Chlorosis, the relations of which to menstruation are intimate, and which seems to be sometimes the offspring of {186} amenorrhoea, exerts a marked retarding influence, amounting to an average of one year and a half. The scrofulous cachexia is still more potent: Scanzoni states that of 31 well-marked cases, in 19 menstruation did not occur until the twenty-first year. Amenorrhoea which is the result of pulmonary tubercular disease comes frequently under observation. It may occur at a very early period of the disease, before there is any great amount of deposit in the lungs, when it is rather the expression of want of vital force than of the exhausting effect of the disease. Under these circumstances it is only to the laity a subject of serious consideration; to the physician it is but a symptom. The suppression as well as the absence of menstruation may be caused by atresia of the passages, this form differing from the congenital only etiologically, and in the fact that the flow has been once established. The acquired atresiæ are mostly the result of violent inflammations or traumatic influences. The vulva and vagina, or either, may be closed from sloughing after difficult labors or gangrene following the septic fevers. Occlusion of the cervix uteri may follow labor or amputation of the part, but a far more frequent cause is the application of severe caustics, happily less frequent now than formerly. Lawson Tait says he has never met with atresia of this part from any other cause. The mode of diagnosis has already been given, and in regard to symptomatology there is only to be noted the statement of Bernutz, that there is far greater intolerance of retention from acquired than from congenital atresia.