Word: cervix
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Cancer of the cervix is one of the commonest forms of malignant disease. It is also one of the most certainly cur able, provided it is detected early. Thanks to the famed "Pap smear" test for early detection, developed by Cornell University's late Dr. George N. Papanicolaou, the lives of an estimated 15,000 women are now being saved each year in the U.S. But gynecologists believe that almost as many women who develop cervical cancer each year will eventually die of it, and needlessly - because it is not being detected soon enough...
...motherhood. He cites the case of a woman in her early 20s, soon to be married. The Pap smear taken at a premarital examination discloses some suspicious cells. Since their source is not precisely pinpointed, standard practice would demand removal of sizable cone-shaped sections of tissue from the cervix and perhaps its entire lip, with the danger of forming scar tissue that could close off the uterus and leave the woman infertile...
...Lethal Vagina. A major controversy in female physiology has concerned the source of the all-important vaginal lubricant. Some authorities have traced it to the uterine cervix; others, to the Bartholin glands flanking the vagina. In fact, says Dr. Masters, the normal cervix secretes nothing of any importance; the Bartholin glands secrete only a minute quantity of lubricant. According to Dr. Masters, the vaginal walls themselves supply nearly all the vaginal lubricant. How they do so is unclear, since there are no glands in the vaginal walls, and this is a subject of continuing study...
Although no one yet knows just how IUCDS prevent conception, it is certain that-unlike the diaphragm, which covers the cervix-they do not prevent passage of the sperm into the uterus and along the Fallopian tube to meet the egg. Since they definitely trigger excessive contractions of the uterine muscles and of the Fallopian tubes, they may cause displacement of the egg before it has time to be fertilized or to settle in the wall of the womb...
Among women there were even more severe cases in which massive cancers had spread from uterus to large bowel and bladder, or from bowel to uterus and bladder. For them Dr. Brunschwig devised a still more radical operation, removing not only the vagina, cervix and uterus, but much of the lower colon and also the bladder. This necessitates making an artificial bladder from a section of small bowel, or leading the ure ters into the colon, which then empties both urine and feces into a "wet colostomy" bag. After more conventional operations for rectal cancer that has not spread widely...