THE SURGICAL TREATMENT OF RETRODEVIATIONS OF THE UTERUS.

It will be admitted that a cure of retrodeviations of the uterus is seldom, if ever, accomplished by the ordinary methods of treatment and that they demand more careful consideration than is usually accorded them. The routine plan of inserting a pessary and dismissing the case from further attention is an error, unfortunately, too often committed. The pessary can only be regarded as a splint which is serviceable as an aid to other measures in bringing about the desired result, but nothing more and will accomplish very little unaided. It may be true that all such displacements of the uterus do not require surgical intervention for their cure, but when structural changes have taken place in the walls of the organ nothing else will yield a prompt and satisfactory result. A pessary might be worn throughout the lifetime of these patients and even if it maintained the uterus in a