THE DISASTROUS TREATMENT OF WOMENS DISEASES


The fact that cutting out of the sex organs produces these symptoms is well known to every experienced doctor and nerve specialist. A number of women who had been told that they suffered from uterine fibroids, and that there was no treatment except operation sought my advice in their despair.


(From the Monthly “Hippokrates”).

THE disastrous treatment of womens diseases by modern specialists cries to Heaven. Countless women are ruined for life by totally unnecessary operations. A lady came to me. She was forty-five years old. When she was forty she suffered from a fibroid tumour of the womb which caused much bleeding. She took advice, and the whole womb was cut out.

During the year following the operation she seemed to feel quite well, but during the second years she began to complain of terrible sensations in the head, the feeling that she was going to have an apoplectic stroke, with terror. The patient compared these attacks to a powerful electric discharge into the brain. The heart also was gravely upset. the patient had the feeling as if the heart would stop beating any moment. There was inflammation of the nerves of the legs and other symptoms, usually called rheumatic, arthritic, or neuritic, which occur frequently in those in whom the change of life has been produced artificially.

The fact that cutting out of the sex organs produces these symptoms is well known to every experienced doctor and nerve specialist. Unfortunately the majority of gynecologists deny that these consequences may follow the excision of the womb, very likely in order to justify the frequent radical operations on women which they recommend and practise.

The lady, who was fairly tall, and somewhat stout at the time of the operating gained 25 lbs. in weight since the time when she was made artificially sexless. During the last six months she suffered in a addition from daily attacks of angina pectoris with terrible pain and feelings of absolute strengthlessness, which prevented her moving about. During the last four months she had been lying in bed all the time.

Examination of the heart by electro-cardio-graph showed that she suffered from pronounced damage to the heart muscle, dilation of the heart, and blood plethora in the lungs. Besides, she had dropsy of the legs. She had been treated by a foremost heart specialist with heart specifics without the slightest benefit, according to the doctor who treated her.

Her doctor had assumed that her suffering might be due to the reckless excision of her sex organs and he had prescribed for her ovarian preparations without particular success. However, he had not recognized that the artificially effected change of life, produced by violence years before the time, was practically the sole cause of her trouble because he had been taught that these radical operation were of no particular importance.

I pointed out to him that the artificial unsexing was sufficient to cause a large accumulation of fat, plethora, high blood pressure and, with it, enlargement of the heart, and that muscles and arteries were poisoned if the discharge of body poisons by way of the menstrual flow was artificially prevented, as I had frequently pointed out in my writings. I prescribed a reducing cure with Glauber salts Senna, Thyroid extract and a reducing diet, and the application of six to ten leeches in the heart region.

During the first two weeks the patients lost 7 lbs., and she enjoyed a number of days during which she was free from pain and attacks. In view of these results, her doctor admitted to me that the extirpation of the womb in this case, and in numerous other ones, had been a terrible mistake and that radical operations should be avoided, that the artificially produced change of life obviously had led to heart attacks which threatened the life of the patient and that, on the other hand, the reducing treatment, which I had given her, a commonsense treatment unknown to heart specialists, was obviously the correct treatment in such cases.

My colleague and I agreed that we should endeavour to reduce the ladys weight by 25 or 30 lbs., and that we should try our best to obviate the disastrous consequences of this unfortunate operation.

I would give another example. A girl seventeen years old had been suffering for nine months from deepest depression, violent attacks of cramps and fainting fits. An experienced physician of the nerve clinic of the Vienna University considered these attacks to be epileptic and had treated them as such.

As usual, the patient was given Bromide, Luminal, and a diet free from salt and a pessimistic forecast was give for the future, a serious thing as the girl wished to study. In August, 1932, she came under my observation. Notwithstanding daily use of Bromide and Luminal, she had one or two attacks per week. She complained about terrible depression, but told me that in former years she had been high-spirited and bright. She also suffered from frequent violent headache and sleeplessness.

I discovered that formerly menstruation lasted four days and that now it lasted only two days and that the discharge per day was much less. Besides the girl suffered from under-nutrition and indigestion , lack of acid in the gastric juice, and the tasteless diet without salt had aggravated matters. I discovered immediately her dopes, her Bromide and Luminal, and prescribed a strengthening diet, with meat, well seasoned and appetite-creating dishes and gave her and Vermouth wine to drink in the evening to ensure sleep.

I also gave her a stomach bitter, remedies to promote the menstrual flow and cold water treatment. After two weeks the attacks of the patient had stopped. Four months have gone by and she has not a single attack although she has not received any Bromide or Luminal. In a couple of weeks her appearance had improved vastly, her depression had gone, she slept well and after two months of treatment she was almost unrecognizable, the picture of happiness, an able scholar.

She sleeps well and she has taken up gymnastic and sport vigorously with excellent success. the nerve specialist who had treated her previously had strictly prohibited flesh foods, condiments, spices and alcohol. Under their treatment she had deteriorated to such an extent that she had contemplated suicide.

A lady of thirty-five years, employed in office work, recently consulted me on account of scanty menstruation. The period lasted only two or three days. That had been her condition ever since puberty. During the last two years the flow had diminished still further and the patient was steadily losing weight. It had decreased by 38 lbs. in the course the last ten years.

When she took off her dress I noticed that she wore a complicated surgical corset with steel supports which reached up to the armpits on the one hand and down almost to the knees on the other hand. When I asked her about this supporting apparatus she informed me that during the last few years she had been treated by a celebrated orthopaedic surgeon, who had discovered by means of X-ray that she suffered from a chronic inflammation of the bones of the spine which had developed bony outgrowths.

She had worn this contraption ever since and informed me that she would have to wear it for the rest of her life. She had been told that she had to avoid every from of sport, to which she had been much devoted. She had undergone cures at various watering places, such as Gastein, Baden, etc., and had been given numerous injections and drugs, diathermy, X-ray treatment, etc., without any benefit. She suffered also from indigestion and constipation and had no appetite. I gave her a strengthening and energizing diet.

Senna as a laxative and as a menstrual stimulant, a bitter stomachic, and I raised a large number of small blisters on her back over a surface of about ten inches square. Soon after this application the patient could again bend her body forwards and sideways which previously had not been possible. In a week the blisters had disappeared, the patient had lost her pain and could easily walk about with an elastic step.

After a fortnight she was walk about to go for a for-hours walk without the surgical corset which had been declared indispensable, although for two years she had been completely dependent upon this arrangement. Her general health and appetite had improved vastly.

How is it that official medicine knows nothing about this commonsense form of treatment ? This is particularly surprising as by means of plasters of Cantharides, etc., all forms of disease of the joint, rheumatism, neuritis, etc., can far more rapidly be improved or cured than by any other means.

A gynaecological surgeon, who believed in radical operations had excised the womb of a lady because she had a fibroid tumour as large as an apple. That happened ten years ago when the lady was forty-two years old. She told me that the tumour had not caused any particular trouble, nor had it produced heavy losses of blood at period time.

During the first two years following the operation the lady felt in perfect health, as happens so frequently. However, than came hot flushes which got worse and they were followed by ever-increasing nerve troubles which pulled down the lady who had always been in good health. Now she did not enjoy a single days good health. She complained bitterly about her sufferings, her nerves had gone completely to pieces, she suffered from indescribable horrors and terrors, making life a burden.

Bernard Aschner
Bernhard Aschner (born January 27, 1883 in Vienna , † March 9, 1960 in New York City ) was an Austrian gynecologist and obstetrician, endocrinologist and medical historian.
After the German invasion and the annexation of Austria , he lost the teaching authority because of his Jewish origin and emigrated to the United States of America. He opened a practice in New York and ran an arthritis outpatient clinic at Stuyvesant Policlinc , later at Lebanon Hospital . Scientifically Aschner first distinguished himself in the field of internal secretion (endocrinology), then as a medical historian.