Dr. Conquest's outlines of midwifery : intended as a text-book for students, and a book of reference for junior practitioners.

  • Conquest, Dr.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. Conquest's outlines of midwifery : intended as a text-book for students, and a book of reference for junior practitioners. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    234/370 (page 220)
    r 220 LABOUES ATTENDED BY CONVULSIONS. reappear with the pains, and the stupor remains be- tween the fits. Convulsions appear more frequently in first than in subsequent pregnancies or labours, and may appear at any time after the sixth month of utero-gestation. [When puerperal convulsions ensue during labour, they generally occur at the period when the os uteri is undergoing dilatation. They may also occur, but less frequently, when the head is forcing against the inferior aperture of the pelvis. The unmarried are more prone to convulsions than married women, in consequence of the anxiety and despondency to which they are subject. Mr. Rose, of Zwaffham, found, that, out of twelve cases which he attended, nine were primiparas, eight occurred in unmarried females, one in a third pregnancy, and two in twelfth labours. In four, they came on after; in I eight, before labour. In five instances, the urine was albuminous prior to labour. Short, stout, muscular women are most liable to j convulsions. They sometimes, however, attack the slender and delicate. Dr. Ramsbotham thinks that cases of convulsion are commonest in hot weather, and during an electrical state of the air.— J. M. W.] ' The essential nature (or, as it is usually termed, the proximate cause) of puerperal convulsions, is conges- tion in the vessels of the brain, in concurrence with an irritable condition of that organ. The predisposing and exciting causes are, pressure