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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$symptoms, and particularly observing in the disease which is the subject of this paper the absence of many symptoms which characterise cancer, and some other diseases of the uterus, I consider myself justified in giving to it a new name, which is in some degree descriptive of its structure. It appears to me to be of great importance to distinguish, by differenl names, diseases which have some symptoms in common, otherwise a confusion in name will lead to confusion in prac- tice, and to the use of the same remedies in disorders very different from one another. If in some cases advantage has been received by the patient, in others much mischief has been done. Error has been propagated, and improvement in practice could not reasonably be expected. I cannot omit this occasion of observing, that the treatment of diseases of the uterus, upon the mere description of symptoms given by a patient without any examination of the parts, or upon the examination and representation of persons not con- versant with the healthy or diseased structure of them, is not likely to be productive of advantage to the patient, or to add to the stock of knowledge heretofore acquired. No person should prescribe for these diseases without examining himself, and every medical man ought to be competent to make such an examination, otherwise he will be likely to do much mischief. Having very frequently met with the cauliflower excrescence of the os uteri, I was much surprised that I could find no specimen of it in any collection of anatomical preparations. I sought for it in vain in the collection of the late Dr. William Hunter. There is no specimen of it in the collection made by Mr. John Hunter, now in the possession of the College of Surgeons; and in all my inquiries, among those who had the best opportunities of finding it in the dead body, I have never been able to procure a specimen which I could add to my private collection, for the purpose of exhibiting it in my lectures.1 1 [In the valuable work of Sir Charles M. Clarke the reader ■will find a very good engraving of this disease; there i^ also a sketch in Dr. Goocfa (p. 306), and another in a paper of Professor Simpson's of Edinburgh, in the ' Dublin Journal,' Nov. 1846, p. 370. It cannot lie denied that there is a good deal of difficult] in obtaining a prepara- tion of this disease, and for the reason given by Dr. Clarke; hut \\c ha\e seen that it ma\ he done, and, I may add, that there is one in Dr. Montgomery's Museum at the College of Physicians.— En$