Skene, Alexander J. C. Treatise on the Disease of Women for the Use of Students and Practitioners. This disease, as the name implies, is characterized by a supersensitiveness of the vulva. Pruritus is absent, and on examination of the parts affected no redness or other external manifestation of the disease is visible. Indeed, the sensitiveness is occasionally so exaggerated as to keep the patient from consulting her physician until it becomes absolutely intolerable.
Sexual intercourse is equally painful, and becomes in aggravated cases impossible.
This affection must not be confounded with vaginismus, or with other conditions of increased sensitiveness of the vulva due to inflammatory conditions. At the menopause the affection seems more likely to occur than at any other period of life, and women of weak mental and physical powers are more often its subjects than those who are strong both in mind and body. Various methods of treatment have been suggested, but so far as my own experience is concerned they have been in most instances unsatisfactory. Nitric acid has been applied, but without a cure resulting. This will also be found useful when making examinations in case of sensitive vulva, or in passing the sound into a sensitive uterus.