Essays on the puerperal fever and other diseases peculiar to women : Selected from the writings of British authors previous to the close of the eighteenth century / Ed. by Fleetwood Churchill.

Fleetwood Churchill

Date:: 1849

Credit: Essays on the puerperal fever and other diseases peculiar to women : Selected from the writings of British authors previous to the close of the eighteenth century / Ed. by Fleetwood Churchill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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$in parturition or the neighbouring tissues ; but arc we there- fore justified in asserting thai puerperal fever is simply a local affection? Are we to agree with Dr. Lee, that Lis observa- tions are therefore subversive of the general opinion now prevalent, that there is a specific, essential, or idiopathic fever, which attacks puerperal women, and which may arise indepen- dently of any local affection in the uterine organs, and even prove fatal without any change in the organization of their diil'erent textures. As the constitutional symptoms thus appear to derive their origin from a local cause, it would certainly be more philosophical, and more consistent with the principles of nosological arrangement, to banish entirely from medical no- menclature the terms puerperal or childbed fever, and to substitute that of uterine inflammation, or inflammation of the uterus and its appendages, in puerperal women.1 I have latterly seen reason to doubt the truth of the view 1 formerly took/ which Mas in accordance with that of Dr. Lee, and though I would wish to express myself cautiously and guardedly, I must honestly avow, that whilst I fully admit the existence of local disease, I do think that epidemic puerperal fever is something more than that, although I may not be able to define exactly what it is. AVc should be justified in this supposition I think on several grounds. First, the very remarkable variety of opinions as to its nature would go far to prove that it cannot be the simple local disease Dr. Lee believes. for example, by some it is regarded as inflammation of the uterus; by others, inflamma- tion of the omentum and intestines; by a third party, as peritonitis ; by a fourth, as erysipelatous inflammation; by a fifth and sixth, as a fever 8ui generis, or with biliary disorder; by a seventh, as a disease of a putrid character, &C. &C. Such different views are hardly reconcileable with the notion of a simple local inflammation. Then again, look at the prevailing characters of different epidemics, and see how varied they are; in one, the lochia are suppressed ; in another they are profuse; in a third, unaltered; diarrhoea is common in one epidemic, constipation in another; typhoid symptoms in one. ordinary fe\cr in another. ■ Researches, p. '■'>■ ' Disetsei of Pregnane] and i hildbed, |>. 283.$