On puerperal eclampsia : notes of a clinical lecture / by Dr. Matthews Duncan.
- James Matthews Duncan
- Date:
- [1875?]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On puerperal eclampsia : notes of a clinical lecture / by Dr. Matthews Duncan. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![healthy condition, strikingly like as it is to that produced by Bright’s disease, come the throes of labour which interfere with the regularity of respiration and suddenly increase the cerebral blood-pressure, flushing the face. It does not seem wonderful that under this combination of circumstances fits should occur, and that they should often appear to recur simultaneously with the pains. If the uraemic theory is insufficient, so also is the theory of Traube ; but the bases of both theories may be advan¬ tageously combined with increasing knowledge as to the con¬ ditions of healthy pregnant women, with a view to a more thorough explanation of the production of the fits. [Here were stated the facts of the case.'] You have here a picture of a case of a truly awful disease. Bystanders are greatly terrified by the fits as they recur and convulse the patient. But the mere phenomena of these paroxysms do not in the same manner alarm the intelligent practitioner, for he is aware that the patient may undergo almost any number of these without irretrievable damage. He has, however, in addition, knowledge of terrible events that may happen: the patient may suddenly die in a fit, and when this happens it is not rarely in the first fit; the patient may become gradually more cyanotic and comatose, and die exhausted, as it is frequently called; and although she may appear to recover, she is more than ordinarily liable to die from secondary diseases during puerperality. When you have seen one case of this disease, you can have only a very imperfect notion of it. Cases differ from one another very much. You may have a case without eclampsia or allied symptoms; you may have a case where nightmare terrors and pains in the head take the place of the convulsive paroxysms; you may have a case with coma alone, with a single fit, or with only two or three; you may have a case with very numerous fits, but without any evident symptoms of great danger; and the most common cases are much more formidable and manifestly very dangerous. Here is a disease which offers the physician an opportunity for a triumph; but, alas, we have no sure remedy. The physician can do very much, and probably saves many lives; and he will be most successful who does not blindly trust to any proceeding or drug, but uses cautiously his resources, watching their effects.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30573178_0006.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
