On a great occasion, Kardinal made the point that it is important to facilitate the awareness of historical evidences. Therefore, this article sets out to document historical data on the very important female organ, the ovary [1].

Battle [2] generalized on the “universal” deposition of melanoma in his 79-year-old patient, “including ovaries,” as he stated prominently. On the opposite ground of non-invasion, Coupland [3] cryptically came to “Ovaries shriveled.”

Legg [4] presented carefully, the history of a woman aged 30 years; she was admitted to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital under the care of Dr.Clark. At autopsy, the picture was clear, namely, “Both ovaries are the size of walnuts, and are formed of four or five new growths, without fluid contents.” Continuing, he mentioned that “parts of all the organs found to contain new growths were hardened in chronic acid.” Histological confirmation followed. This was also done in respect of the original eye growth.

The famous German pathologist, Julius Cohnheim, [5] was convinced that autopsies help in the understanding of natural phenomena. Accordingly, melanoma, which is characteristically pigmented, constitutes the best lesion for metastasis study. In the standard work on metastasis, Willis, [6] included a few historical cases of ovarian metastasis growths without much explanation. Here, pains were taken to expand the historical picture.

There is the axiom that “truths” need to be viewed from the vantage grounds of current perspectives [7]. Accordingly, on the bases of candid case reports, the present series demonstrated some 19th Century data on ovarian metastases. In sum, these cases add to the evidence missing from a recent historical survey of pigment biology [8] (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Excised specimen of an ovarian tumor.