IF one desires to familiarize himself with a thorough understanding of this subject, it is absolutely necessary to bear in mind what was said of the natural support of the uterus, for unless one has a full knowledge of the foundation of a structure, how can he comprehend its defects and remedy them when the structure falls? The workman who potters on a building that has shifted from its foundation without first devising means for a new and solid basis for it to rest upon, would be considered a fool. The term “falling of the womb” has no longer the significance that it once had, for it is only a symptom that something is wrong, and in the present state of our knowledge it is misleading and a misnomer, inasmuch as it conveys the impression that it is due to an affection of the uterus, when as a matter of fact it is not due to any disease of the womb at all. If the prolapsed uterus has become involved in a morbid process, it is the result of the abnormal conditions that have brought the prolapsus about, and in which the uterus was in no way concerned. Professor Schroeder, of Berlin, takes a similar view of these cases, and he groups into one chapter three distinct varieties, yet, because one is depending on the other, he considers them all as one disease. These affections are: prolapse or falling of the womb; prolapse or falling of the vagina, and an inflammatory elongation or _hypertrophy_ of the cervix or neck of the womb. He says “that the displacement of the womb is very seldom a primary affection, but that it is oftener the consequence of a prolapse or falling of the vagina, and a giving way of other structures, or of the pelvic floor, and, as such, ‘falling of the womb’ cannot be properly separated into an individual affection of the womb.”