GYNÆCOLOGY AND OBSTETRICS

Amenorrhcea as an Early Symptom of Brain Tumour. An editorial article in the New York Medical Journal for 16th December, 1905, is devoted to this subject, and gives special warning of the possible error in diagnosis if the patient be a young woman suffering from amenorrhea with vomiting and headache. The locality involved is not always the same ; Bayerthal has reported a case in which the neoplasm was found in the left optic thalamus. In this case it was not until several months of amenorrhoea that any abnormality could be found in the eye, and then it was only a slight oedema of the optic papilla. In Abelsdorff s case a benign tumour was found at the base of the brain ; in this case the amenorrhcea had existed for ten years before any other morbid sign. The lesion is most frequently found in cases of tumour involving the hypophysis or its neighbourhood at the base of the brain. It also attends growths in the posterior cranial fossa, especially where there is marked hydrocephalus, and in this case there is usually rapid diminution of visual acuity. Acromegaly, which also is related to lesions of the hypophysis, is attended by suppression of the menstrual flow.