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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$described, and distinguished from others, is something gained. All stimulating substances, cither in diet or medicine, seem to aggravate it by increasing the discharge] and no astringents internally given, which 1 have tried, appear to lessen it. The only means from which I have seen any benefit derived, is the injecting into the vagina three times a day, a strong decoction of cortex granati, or of cortex quercus, in which alum is dissolved in the proportion of eight or ten grains to every ounce of it. This has the double effect of Lessening the quantity of the discharge, and rendering it less offensive.1 It is scarcely necessary to add, that the use of anodynes must be resorted to for the1 mitigation of pain, and that the occasional symptoms of suppression of urine and costiveness are to be relieved by the use of a catheter and mild laxatives. Postscript. Read Jan. 8, 1811.—Since the foregoing paper was laid before the Society, a case of cauliflower ex- crescence, connected with pregnancy, has occurred in the practice of my brother, Mr. Clarke. Margaret Pole, aged 32, the mother of eight children, discovered that she was pregnant in the beginning of the year 1 [All writers agree in the propriety of the use of astringents as a palliative, and to moderate the excessive discharge; hut some seem to regard that as all that can he done, because of the failure of cure by the ligature. If the ligature he only applied around the root of the excrescence, and when it comes away if nothing more be done, there is little doubt that the disease will return, and in the end prove fatal. Jiut if, after removing the tumour by a ligature, we make a deep eschar on the spot from which it grew by nitric acid, caustic potash, or chloride of zinc, it is quite possible ''as in the case which came under my care) so to extirpate the disease that a permanent cure will be effected. Or, what is probably still more certain, if the substance Of the cervix and body <>f the uterus is free from disease, the uterus may be drawn down to the vaginal orifice by means of Moeeux's forceps, and the entire disease with a sufficient portion of the cervix removed by the scissors, as in lime. Boivin's and Professor Simpson's cases; or by ligature, as in Dr. Montgomery's CBSes, and in the one upon which I have recently operated. The ligature comes away in five or Bii days, and we avoid all chance of hemorrhage. It I excised the Cervix, I would certainly take the opportunity of applying the actual eauterv. Dr. Simpson places his patient on her face, with the legs hanging down over the edge of the bed, for the greater safcU and convenience of cutting from behind for- wards. Pot some weeks after the operation, it will he ad\isahle to use astringent injec- tions once or twice a day.— Bd. 1$