As regards the vascular system of the female genital organs, the latter are supplied by the internal iliac artery. One of the two terminal branches of the common iliac, the internal iliac artery, descends into the pelvis over the sacro-iliac synchondrosis. Its branches may be arranged in four groups: anterior group, the hypogastric, iliolumbar, and obturator arteries; posterior group, the lateral sacral, gluteal, and sciatic arteries; internal group, the inferior vesical, uterine, and middle haemorrhoidal arteries; inferior group, comprising a single artery only, the internal pudic; the uterine artery supplies the uterus and the vaginal fornices; the ovarian artery supplies the ovary, the Fallopian tube, and the broad ligament of the uterus; the vaginal, cervicovaginal, or vesico-vaginal artery supplies the vagina; the internal pudic artery supplies the vestibule and the clitoris; the superior and inferior external pudic arteries (branches of the femoral artery) supply the labia majora. The veins of the female genital organs correspond in general to the arteries in their course and nomenclature, and empty their blood into the internal iliac vein. [Illustration: FIG. 4.—The distribution of the lateral sacral arteries, the superior haemorrhoidal or superior rectal artery, the uterine artery, the ovarian artery and the distal portion of the internal pudic artery. (From Toldt: Atlas of Human Anatomy.—Rebman Company, New York.) ] Attention must also be paid to the extremely rich lymphatic vascular system of the female genital apparatus. The body of the uterus and the annexa of that organ, the neck of the uterus and the vaginal fornices, the middle segment of the vagina, the lower segment of the vagina, the vestibule and the external genital organs—each of these possesses an independent set of lymphatic vessels, leading moreover to independent groups of lymphatic glands. It may be said that the lymph from the vulva passes to the inguinal glands, that from the vagina and the neck of the uterus to the internal and the external iliac lympathic glands, that from the upper part of the uterus and also that from the ovaries and Fallopian tubes to the median group of lumbar lymphatic glands (also known, from their position in front of the aorta and the vena cava, as the aortic lymphatic glands) (_Chrobak von Rosthorn_). The important influence which the genital processes exercise on the female organism as a whole is established not only by the anatomical relations just described but also by a number of physiological investigations and experiments and by the result of operations on the female genital organs.