In order to appreciate all the causes that operate for either good or evil, we must pause for a moment and consider the sympathy with and the close relation of the mucous membrane to the circulation of the blood and the nervous system. The mucous membrane of the different organs is often made the safety valve through which obnoxious materials or morbid conditions of the blood are eliminated from the system, and for that reason I have long ago discarded the usual harsh measures in the treatment of sudden or acute catarrhs. I have found that, by carefully watching and giving close attention to the details of certain rules of health, catarrhs speedily disappear of their own accord: on the other hand, if irritating local remedies are constantly used, catarrhs continue to grow worse. This demonstrated fact so very often repeated, impressed upon my mind the importance of hygienic measures for the successful treatment of catarrhal inflammations, whether they are of the respiratory organs or of the female pelvic organs. The most prominent and efficacious measures are to be found in intelligent precautions for preventing colds and inuring the system to changes of temperature by appropriate outdoor exercise. By far the greater proportion of female complaints are catarrhal inflammations, and these fasten themselves upon all the pelvic organs—on the bladder, vagina, womb and Fallopian tubes. We generally know how we contract a bronchial catarrh or bronchitis, a nasal catarrh or sore throat; in precisely the same manner do women contract most of their pelvic catarrhs, that is, from a common cold or sudden chilling of the body or part of the body. Dr. Thomas F. Rumbold, in his work on the “Hygiene and Treatment of Catarrh,” says: “The history of every case of chronic catarrh attests that the complaint commenced with colds in the head and that the disease grew upon the patient almost imperceptibly, the first colds being so trivial in character as to attract but little attention.” This statement is as true of the great majority of cases of vaginal and uterine catarrh as it is of catarrhs of the air passages, and for this reason the measures and precautions for the prevention of colds must be one of the features in the successful treatment of female complaints. The particulars of the causation of colds and the hygienic precautions for their prevention are hardly ever given the attention which their importance demands in the treatment for catarrhal complaints of women, so that a great deal of suffering is left unrelieved and a great deal of expensive and useless doctoring is endured. Altogether too much reliance is placed upon a wash or some local application made by the doctor to the affected parts, and, indeed, the mainspring of the catarrhal affection is entirely overlooked or neglected, which is, the susceptibility to the recurrence of fresh colds.