Femina, A Work for Every Woman — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Femina, A Work for Every Woman
John Stuart Mill · en
Dr. William Goodell, who stands as high in the department of diseases
of women as any American, had an article in one of the medical journals
on “The Abuses of Uterine Treatment.” He says: “From a large experience
I humbly offer to the reader the following watchwords as broad helps to
diagnosis: 1. Always bear in mind what another has pithily said, that
‘woman has some organs outside of the pelvis.’ 2. Each neurotic case
will usually have a tale of fret or grief, of cark and care, of wear
and tear. 3. Scant or delayed or suppressed menstruation is far more
frequently the result of nerve exhaustion than of uterine disease. 4.
Anteflexion of the womb, _per se_, is not a pathological condition. It
is so when associated with sterility or painful menstruation, and only
then does it need treatment. 5. An irritable bladder is more a nerve
symptom than a uterine one. 6. In a large number of cases of supposed
or actual uterine disease, which display marked gastric disturbance, if
the tongue be clean the essential disease will be found to be neurotic,
and it must be treated so. 7. Almost every supposed uterine case,
characterized by excess of sensibility and by lack of will-power,
is essentially a neurosis. 8. In the vast majority of cases in which
the woman takes to her bed, and stays there indefinitely, from some
supposed uterine lesion, she is bedridden from her brain and not from
her womb. I will go further, and assert that this will be the rule even
when the womb is displaced, or it is disordered by a lesion or disease,
that is not in itself exacting or dangerous to life. Finally, uterine
or womb symptoms are not _always_ present in cases of uterine disease,
nor, when present and even urgent, do they necessarily come from
uterine disease, for they may be merely nerve counterfeits of uterine
disease.”
There is not a physician of any extended experience in the land who,
if he be true to his better judgment, will not indorse every word of
Professor Goodell’s propositions. But the chances are they will never
accomplish the good for which they were intended if the mothers, wives,
and daughters are not permitted “a little peep” behind the curtain,
and learn for themselves. For those who are wealthy and have plenty
of money, doctoring may be a luxury or an amusement, but there the
line must be drawn for the benefit of the deserving poor, with whom
any treatment is a hardship. Stupidity of the masses is one of the
causes of the abuse of surgical treatments, for they always look upon
a surgical or bloody operation as one of the greatest achievements of
modern medical art. Then there is the cupidity of the professional
classes, who trade upon this popular error and delusion, and charge
correspondingly large fees, which, as a rule, are exorbitant,
particularly when the working classes are the sufferers.