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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$V.—DR. DENMAN'S ACCOUNT OF AM EXCRESCENCE FROM THE WOMB.1 Ix the year 17(.)-°) a lady, upwards of 30 years of age, who had borne many children, and was lately become a widow, had irregular returns of the menses. These, in a short time, be- came profuse, and wore accompanied with slight pains, like those which attend the commencement of labour. For this disorder she had consulted many physicians, and taken a great variety of medicines, but without any other benefit than what was merely temporary. In the year 1802 she applied to Dr. Baillie, who discovered a polypus in the vagina. I was soon afterwards desired to visit her, and finding the polypus of that kind and in such a situation that it could be tied, a ligature was passed over it, on the 4th of December in the same year. The ligature came away on the 12th, and a tumour of a considerable size and pyriform shape was removed, not a vestige of it remaining in the vagina. The os uteri closed, and was in a perfectly healthy state ; every kind of discharge ceased, and she returned into the country in good spirits, and apparently in good health. In February 1803 she was much troubled with the hemor- rhoids, from which she was relieved by the occasional applica- tion of one or more leeches, and by other common means used for that disorder. After a lew months, the discharges which had before accom- panied the tumour returned ; and in the latter part of this year 1 [An Account of an Excrescence from the Womb, attended with uncommon circumstances. l'>\ Thomas Denman, ii.d. Read July I. 1809. (Transactions of a Society for the Improvement of Medical and Chirurgical Knowledge, vol. iii. p. 308.) This case possesses considerable interest when compared with the preceding ones of Dr. Clarke, to which it possesses a degree of similarity. It confirms the fact, that firm polypous tumoura maj he endowed with great power of reproduction; and proves an exception to the rule laid down, that after the reino\al of the main por- tion of a polypus, the stalk Bloughfl or withers away.—En.]$