A treatise on the diseases of females / by William P. Dewees.

  • William Potts Dewees
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the diseases of females / by William P. Dewees. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library at Emory University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Library, Emory University.

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    rate those instances, which continue after the active or inflam- matory condition of the parts has ceased ; as after syphilis or gonorrhoea, and become like gleet in the male; a prolapsed uterus restored; or a tumour removed; for the vessels of the uterus and vagina seem to have less recuperative power than any other portions of the body. Almost every part of the body, which is susceptible of action, may have that action to continue after it has been once excited, though the exciting cause be re- moved ; we witness it in the nervous, and muscular systems, as in chorea, hooping-cough, &c; in the vascular and glandular systems, as in the continuance of spitting, after the action of mercury has ceased; in the membranous and vascular systems, a&lhe discharge of mucous after dysentery; and, agreeably to Mr, Hunter, as in the gleet after gonorrhoea. He distinguishes the condition of the mucous membrane of the urethra in gonor- rhoea, and in gleet, in the following manner. The venereal in- flammation is of such a nature as to. go off of itself, or to wear itself out; or, in other words, it is such an action of the living powers as can subsist but a given time. But this is not the case with a gleet, which seems to take its rise from a habit of action which the parts have contracted, as they have no disposition to lay aside this action, it of course is continued; for, we find in those gonorrhoeas which last long, and are tedious in their cure, that this habit is more rooted than in those which go off soon. Treatise on the Ven. Dis. art. Gleet. It is., in many instances, precisely the same in leucorrhcea: the mucous membrane of the vagina, may be irritated, by a sponta- neous inflammation; by mechanical agencies; by acrid sub- stances; by morbid poisons; or perhaps by some sympathetic influence, so as to produce leucorrhcea^ The irritating causes may, nevertheless, be altogether • withdrawn; yet the surface which had for so long a time continued to produce the fluor albus, will from habit persevere in its production. Hence, the leucorrhcea of longstanding, is always much more difficult to overcome, than the one which is in its primitive and active con- dition. But this last species, it may be remarked, very rarely occurs, and is perhaps more common after gonorrhoea, than after any other cause. s Durelvlno.?^8 ^ *°-08tab,iah' a sPecies of leucorrhcea, soP buf rthiV^ >T endeavoured to prove them all to be conditions of thf he un^es^b\y confounds two distinct ^Tte aZf J^^T 7,embrane of the ™g*na. He says, pends Z a ZZrTrtZ* 5 ^ ]°CaI a^C,ion' and de' four oeriod^ l'?*1?? °1 the organs. It offers