On some of the most important diseases of women : with other papers / prefatory essay by R. Ferguson.

  • Robert Gooch
Date:
1859
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On some of the most important diseases of women : with other papers / prefatory essay by R. Ferguson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    remarks are more applicable than the peritoneal fevers of lying-in women. Lastly, I would urge practitioners of midwifery to make themselves familiarly acquainted with those modes of treatment which appear on competent testimony to have been, at times at least, most successfd, so as to have them ready to apply when the occasion occurs. In most of the epidemics which I have read of or witnessed, many cases occurred, and many lives were lost, before the practitioners, who were concerned about them, had time to overcome the panic which they produced, to put their knowledge in order, and proceed to the treatment of the disease with clear and methodical views. ]\Iuch of this would be avoided if they previously made up their minds, out of what remedies their selection ought to be made. In acquiring this knowledge it is not superfluous to say, that it will be of no value unless it is rigidly and scrupulously accurate, consisting of a minute knowledge, not only of the remedies themselves, but of the times for employing them, the extent to which they ought to be carried, and all the circumstances on which their successful employ- ment depends. A want of tliis strict and minute accuracy is one of the causes why remedies, which have been so successful in some hands, so often fails in others. The remedies for the efficacy of which there is most evidence are, 1st, bleeding and piirging; 2d, emetic doses of ipecacuanha; 3d, opiates internally, and poultices externally to the abdomen; 4th, mercury given so as to affect the constitution ; 5th, oil of tui'pentine. I. There is a class of peritoneal fevers in which the affection of the peritoneum is acute inflammation, and that of the con- stitution is inflammatory fever, although this inflammatory state often lasts only a few hours. These cases may occui- not only occasionally or sporadically, but become prevalent or epidemic. On this point, those who wrote toward the end of the last century were in an error, supposing that whenever the disease was epidemic, it was of a low typhoid type; there can be no doubt, that among the peritoneal fevers of lying-in women there are inflammatory epidemics, but how are we to know that the case or the epidemic is of tliis kind ? by attending to what Sydenham called the ' Constitution of the year,' that is, in plain language, the prevailing state of the human body indicated by its prevaihng diseases, and by the modes of treat- ment which these diseases bear and require; by the character of the