598 PLAIN FACTS FOR OLD AND YOUNG 



period, inflammation of the uterus, the use of caustics 

 upon the womb, gonorrhea, pessaries, and sexual 

 excesses. 



Recent investigations of eminent surgeons have 

 shown that the condition formerly supposed to be cellu- 

 litis, or inflammation of the cellular tissue about the 

 uterus, is, in many cases, an inflammation of the Fal- 

 lopian tubes, called in medical phraseology salpingitis. 

 One of the most common causes of this condition is 

 gonorrheal infection. Every woman ought to know 

 that in marrying a man who has once suffered from 

 this disease, she is exposing herself to the liability of 

 contracting it, even though many years have elapsed 

 since the disease was supposed to have been cured. 

 The disease is a very persistent one, apparently re- 

 maining latent for many years, only to break out afresh 

 as the result of a slight cold or some other exciting 

 cause, although perhaps in so modified a form that its 

 real character is not suspected. Thousands of men 

 who have led, for a time, dissipated lives, but have 

 reformed, have unknowingly communicated to their 

 wives this wretched disease, and have thereby not only 

 rendered them sterile as the result of the inflammation 

 of the tubes, set up by the infection, but have sub- 

 jected them to most terrible suffering, and not infre- 

 quently to loss of life. Thousands of women have been 

 saved from death only by the surgeon's knife. The 

 author has had occasion to operate upon many cases 

 of this kind, and not infrequently it has been only 

 by the narrowest chance that the patient's life was 

 saved. 



In a recent case operated upon, the pelvis was filled 

 with two enormous abscesses, one on either side, one 

 of which ruptured in the effort to remove it, in spite 



