deadened by a towel they
were quite unconscious that the bladder had been emptied. [In
confirmation of this statement I have noticed that in a lady
whose distended bladder it was necessary to empty by the catheter
shortly before the birth of her first child--but who had, indeed,
been partly under the influence of chloroform--there was no
consciousness of the artificial relief; she merely remarked that
she thought she could now relieve herself.] There was some sense
of temperature, but sense of locality, tactile sense, and
judgment of size were often widely erroneous. It is significant
that virgins were just as insensitive as married women or those
who had had children. Calmann's experiments appear to be
confirmed by the experiments of Marco Treves, of Turin, on the
thermoesthesiometry of mucous membranes, as reported to the Turin
International Congress of Physiology (and briefly noted in
_Nature_, November 21, 1901). Treves found that the sensitivity
of mucous membranes is always less than that of the skin. The
mucosa of the urethra and of the cervix uteri was quite incapable
of heat and cold sensations, and even the cautery excited only
slight, and that painful, sensation.

In further illustration of this point reference may be made to
the not infrequent cases in which the whole process of
parturition and the enormous distention of tissues which it
involves proceed throughout in an almost or quite painless
manner. It is sufficient to refer to two cases reported in Paris
by Mace and briefly summarized in the _British Medical Journal_,
May 25, 1901. In the first the patient was a primipara 20 years
of age, and, until the dilatation of the cervix was complete and
efforts at expulsion had commenced, the uterine contractions were
quite painless. In the second case, the mother, aged 25, a
tripara, had previously had very rapid labors; she awoke in the
middle of the night without pains, but during micturition the
fetal head appeared at the vulva, and was soon born.

Further illustration may be found in those cases in which severe
inflammatory processes may take place in the genital canal
without being noticed. Thus, Maxwell reports the case of a young
Chinese woman, certainly quite normal, in whom after the birth of
her first child the vagina became almost obliterated, yet beyo