patient, salted meats, gravies, spice, pepper, spirituous and vinous drinks, ought to be forbidden. The warm bath, or the hip bath, is a highly useful ordinance; and some proper lotion or application. should be provided for the affected parts.

It seems obvious that this must be a case for the nitrate of silver to show its alterative powers; for if there be any sample of disease that would be likely to yield to it, this would seem to be, most probably, the very one. Yet, I am constrained to say, I have not found it to answer the purpose. Nor does vinegar, nor mucilage, nor cold, nor tepid water, nor laudanum and water, nor alum cure it; but this is true, viz., that very few cases fail to be either cured or kept within very moderate bounds, by the following recipe:

Take of biborate of soda, half an ounce; distilled rose-water, six ounces; sulphate of morphia, six grains. Mix, and direct the lotion to be applied to the part affected many times a day.

Every man becomes probably more or less a routinist in his methods. It is with me a routine to order the above compound lotion; and I aver to you, that I believe, if you order it for your patients, you will have very little trouble in curing them. I am speaking here of the general run of cases. Should you use this compound, and find yourselves disappointed as to its curative powers, you ought to request an opportunity to examine, by inspection, the peculiarities of the malady, in order to enable you to judge whether blood-letting, purging, emollients, nitrate of silver, or astringents and tonics should be preferred.

Ancient injuries, by laceration, by ulcers, and by fevers, may have contracted the external parts so much as greatly to interfere with the dilatations required for the transmission of the child in labor. Patience can, perhaps, overcome even the contractions of old cicatrices; but when you are called on to give your opinion. in such cases, you would do well to have at the call of your memory the views of Dr. Dewees, who taught us that the most resolute cicatrix may be rendered dilatable under the influence of bleeding, ad deliquium animi. I have met with no such cases myself.

The labia are frequently the seats of a phlegmonous inflammation. The texture of the organ being very lax and distensible, the abscess formed within it generally points early, and always points on the mucous surface. I never yet met with one that did

not end in suppuration; not because suppuration could not be prevented, but because the woman will never call for counsel until it is too late to expect any other termination. It is a simple matter, though a very vexatious and painful one.

You should open the abscess as soon as the fluctuation of the pus can be made out. The pain disappears with the cessation of the tension upon the escape of the pus. It is very common for a woman, who has had one labial abscess, to be troubled with several consecutive attacks of the same kind.

With these remarks, which appear to me sufficient to set the matters in question in a clear light, I have to conclude this letter with the assurance of my respectful consideration.

GENTLEMEN:-There is another part of the system of organs contained within the pudenda, which deserves your professional attention, I mean the labia minora, or, as they are more generally denominated, the nymphæ; quasi custodes castitatis.

They are composed of an external or mucous membrane, within which there is an erectile spongy texture, which gives to them in the young, a certain degree of firmness, or hardness, that is not to be observed in individuals reduced by disease, or those who are advanced in age.

In the young and healthy female, the labia minora are of a rosaceous hue, which for such as have borne children, gives place to a dark, or even brownish tint. They are also much changed by the repeated excitement of the sexual passions, and are often after labor, discovered to be permanently enlarged, or torn and ragged or jagged on their edges or sides, by the violence done to them during the extremest extension of the parts, by the outpassing child, or by the edges of instruments employed in its delivery.

In a young child newly born, it is usual to find the nymphæ

jutting out beyond the genital rima—but very early-say by the end of the 14th or 20th day, the development of the labia majora, which proceeds rapidly as soon as the fœtal circulation is cut off, comes to cover up and wholly conceal the nymphæ; which, in the virgin, are not found to jut beyond the rima; whereas, the woman who has borne children, and who has suffered lesion of this organ in parturition, generally protrudes one, or both of them above or beyond the rima.

The physiological uses of the nymphæ are not agreed upon; but it is strange to find that such a writer as Dr. Campbell, in his Introduction to the Study and Practice of Midwifery, p.31, should say that "they are supposed to direct the urine from the urethra, and prevent its flowing over the external parts, and they contribute to enlarge the vagina during the exit of the foetus; for at this time they are quite obliterated."

Pray observe that, should the stream of urine touch the lower end of the nymphæ, it would be sure to flow over and bathe the whole perineum; and you will not forget my assurances in the lecture-room, that I had very repeatedly found during the extremest distension of the external genitalia, the nymphæ hard and well marked along each side of the distending head of the child. You will find that Dr. Murat, in the article Nymphes of the Dict. des Sci. Med., avers that they do serve to the amplification of the vaginal orifice. It is incorrect to say so, since they belong not to the vagina but are a sort of valvulæ conniventes of the labia majora, to whose enlargement in labors they contribute not, or if I am incorrect in saying not at all, at least I am surely correct to say very little.

Fabricius ab Aquapendente, relates a case in which there was atresia of the vagina from imperforate hymen. The external part was protruded by the collection of the menstrua within. This distension had so effaced the nymphæ as to lead to the belief that the girl had none at all; but when the collection had been discharged and the external organs recovered their situs, the nymphæ were found to be perfect. This example is relied on by Dr. Murat in support of his view. But I ask you to consider whether the slow protrusion and development caused by a gradual collection of blood within the womb and vagina, might not introduce changes in the character of the formation within the sinus pudoris, which

could not be brought about by the rapid and rushing distensions of a common labor.

If such an addition were necessary for such a purpose as is pretended, it is probable that it would be found in the other warm blooded animals; but we have Mr. Lawrence's assurance, in his Comparative Anatomy, p. 452, that none of the mammalia possess nymphæ, and there is, in general, merely a thin border of the integuments instead of labia pudendorum.

In the case of diseased clitoris, of which I gave an account at p. 83 of my edition of M. Colombat's work, I carefully sought for the labia minora, and you will see, by reference to the cut at p. 84, that, notwithstanding the enormous tumor of the clitoris, they still preserved their visible physical character.

What, then, is the use of the nymphæ?—what their physiological function? It is to increase the surface of contact, and to bring the clitoris into contact, for the end to augment the aphrodisiac orgasm. That orgasm is probably essential as an agent in the fecundation of the germ, as without its intervention, it is probable the tubes could not apply their fimbria to the ovary, and thus the ovulum would be lost.

It belongs to all women to possess them.

Their

Among the various tribes of dark-skinned savages of Southern Africa, there is one called Bosjesman or Boschisman. women, it is averred, are all endowed with an appendage to the external organs, which is called the Hottentot apron-le tablier des Hottentottes, though the Hottentot women are without it—the production belonging only to the Boschisman women. One of these women died in Paris in 1816, and was dissected at the Jardin des Plantes. The tablier was found to be only a hypertrophied state of the two nymphæ, but so long and loose, and flap-like, that they could be turned up like hound's ears, above the symphysis pubis. It is a very remarkable ethnographical feature, and so far as I can learn, belongs to only one tribe, and that a South African one. The tablier, to a certain extent, may be met with as an accidental hypertrophy among women, here and there, of all races; but that it should become an ethnographical peculiarity is fit to excite our surprise.

I find that our distinguished countryman, Horatio Hale, author of the Ethnographical and Philological results contained in the 7th volume of the United States Exploring Expedition, makes no

mention of this structure as a feature of the numerous and diversified races in the South Seas.

Travellers in Abyssinia assert that it is a custom practised by the quasi Christians, under the government of Selahé Salassie, to circumcise the females at an early age, by the excision of a portion of the nymphæ, and it seems to have prevailed in that benighted land for centuries, probably from some misapprehension of the Mosaic injunction as to the rite for males.

These organs are endowed with a very high degree of sensibility, and as they have a copious circulation within, are subject to attacks of inflammation, whether accidental or specific. I have often found them to be more or less lacerated in labors. In the general, such accidents happening to them have not required at my hands any special direction beyond that of keeping them as far as possible free from the irritating influence of sharp or acrid discharges. For the most part, the tissues within the sinus pudoris are maintained in an emollient state by the lochial excretion, and by the mucus which is yielded in great abundance by the genito-urinary mucous membrane. They do not, therefore, like a dermal and exposed surface, require lotions and emollient cataplasms, since they are buried within emollient surfaces.

I advise you, however, to think, that if a woman be so unfortunate as to have a nympha half torn off, the monthly nurse ought to receive clear instruction as to keeping her patient very clean, by bathing the parts often enough with warm wine and water, or other convenient lotions, such as infusion of chamomile and lintseed or slippery elm; for there is a vulgar and disgusting notion that a woman must not change her napkin often lest she stop her discharge thereby; and some of them are so fully imbued with this prejudice that they will allow the accumulated outpourings of the vagina and womb to putrefy on the napkins. Imagine the fetor that must accompany such a state of those putrescible materials hidden beneath warm bed-clothes, and with the patient perhaps at a fever heat of 101 degrees of Fahrenheit!

I hope that you will be able to exercise your proper authority as medical counsel, and help, within your sphere, to cast out of the popular mind not this only, but every error and vulgar prejudice that you may find to have descended from remote and barbarous ages. A young female, with whom I spoke about a week since on the subject of a sexual malady, assured me she had never