The principles and practice of midwifery : with some of the diseases of women.

  • Milne, Alexander
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The principles and practice of midwifery : with some of the diseases of women. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    650/680 (page 618)
    (518 cases of incliu’ation, and without inflicting an increase of suffering on the woman. Under its blessed power, careful manual dilatation may be painlessly and suc- cessfully carried out, and thereby, in some cases, the more doubtful operation of incision avoided. 608. But it is in operative midwifery that its greatest value is seen. How helpful, for instance, in version ! How serviceable in fox’ceps cases, and in the sad opera- tion of embryotomy ! In version, more particularly, has it proved of inestimable utility. Formerly—that is, before its introduction—this operation was often debarred by rigidity of parts, or by a tetanically con- tracting uterus, and the destruction of the child was in consequence necessitated: now we are enabled to brush these obstacles aside, and to bring home living infants, that in ])re-an{Bsthetic times would have been inevitably sacrificed. As before remai’ked in this work, we have performed veraion in a multitude of instances -svithout the shadow of evil result to the mother; but we are quite convinced that had we operated in days prior to the time when our late warm and lamented friend Simpson (too early gone to the silent land) intro- duced anaisthesia into obstetric practice, we would have slain many more children, and mayhap, not a few mothers. We have refen-ed to the relaxant effect of the chloroform on the os, and we must now remark, that in numerous cases it is of excellent service in slowly dilating perineum. Most practitioners who have, in the absence of skilled lady-doctors—a crop of whom, by the way, is now flourishing, even under adverse influences, in the city where we write—most practi- tioners, we say, who have supported perineums for any length of time will be able to testify to the relaxation which the anaisthetic brings. It saves the doctor no little precious time; but what is of vastly more conse- quence, it spares the woman no little exhausting effort and pain.