Robert Battey

Initially referred to as ovariotomy, and named "Battey's Operation" in his honor, it is what today is termed a radical oophorectomy.

He was instrumental in establishing the Gynecological Infirmary in Rome, Georgia, later enlarged and renamed the Martha Battey Hospital in honor of his wife.

During the second half of the 19th century many women were treated using bilateral oophorectomy for conditions recognised today such as amenorrhoea, dysmenorrhoea, menometrorrhagia, and various conditions that were variously referred to at the time as pelvic neurosis, oophoromania, oophoralgia, menstrual molimina (premenstrual syndrome), ovarian epilepsy and sexuologic (nymphomania) disorders.

[4] Furthermore, debate on the efficacy of oophorectomy remained controversial until the end of the 19th century, when J Whitridge Williams maintained that many of the ovaries he had examined after removal were normal, and that many operations had not been justified.

Ironically, Thomas Spencer Wells, the ovariotomist Battey had first met in 1859, went on (at a Symposium attended by Battey and Alfred Hagar in 1886) to condemn the practice of surgical castration for mental or nervous diseases,[6] saying "That in nearly all cases of nervous excitement and madness it [oophorectomy] is inadmissible" and "That in nymphomania and mental diseases it [oophorectomy] is, to say the least, unjustifiable".