Vaginal Surgery for Incontinence and Prolapse

Imagine the plight of a young woman, some time during the thousands of years before the mid-18th century, who, soon after a diffi cult childbirth, fi nds she can no longer keep from leaking urine. She is standing in the chill winter wind, her urine-soaked clothes clinging wet against her thighs as she comforts her crying baby knowing that she faces a life of misery, shame and social ostracism. Or imagine the middle-aged wife of a tenant farmer on the remote central Illinois plain, straining with her husband to lift a heavy log that has fallen on their only milk cow only to feel a deep...