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

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.

289/370 (page 275)

$of ramd, and bod}^ in a recumbent posture ; and a cold and astringent injection, per vaginam, for which no- thing answers better than equal parts of acqua dis- tillata and liquor aluminis compositus. This may- be thrown up two or three times daily, and, conjoined with it, the bidet may be used to the loins and pubes. Sea bathing;, with any other means likely to give tone to the system, should be recommended. Every cir- cumstance and engagement, with all such articles of food as accelerate the frequency and increase the force of the action of the heart, must be avoided. The internal exhibition of the mineral acids, with catechu, often does good; and sometimes benefit is derived from a combination of myrrh and iron, as in the pihda or mistura ferri composita. \_Sudden cessation of the locMal discharge, soon after delivery, should be regarded with great appre- hension, as it generally indicates the approach of puerperal fever or of some serious inflammatory dis- ease of the uterus or its appendages. J. M. W.] With respect to the medical management of the infant, it is merely necessary to state, that there can be no doubt, by what is observed in wild animals, that, if the habits of the human species were equally natural with those of the brute creation, the breasts of the mother would contain a sufficiency of the first milk to purge the infant, and carry off that quantity of dark-coloured mucus which is found in the bowels of infants when born. But as this is not the case, it is the least of two evils to have recourse to the unna- tural practice of exhibiting a little opening medicine, I 2$