The Dublin practice of midwifery / by Henry Maunsell.

  • Henry Maunsell
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Dublin practice of midwifery / by Henry Maunsell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    faintness; but I rather tliink it has no necessary connection -with the woman's sensation of the first motions of the child, as 1 have repeatedly felt the uterus in the abdomen long before any quickening had taken place. Great value must be attached to this sign of pregnancy, when women have no motive for misrepresentation, and have had experience of former pregnancies ; but, even under such circum- stances, we find that they are themselves occasion- ally deceived, mistaking the motions of air in their own intestines, or spasms of then- abdominal mus- cles, for actions of the foetus. In many instances the pressure of the cold hand of the accoucheur, during examination, will excite the child to motion; and we might then suppose that no loop was left to hang a doubt upon ; but, as if to remind us that we are very fallible, we find cases related (for instance, that of the celebrated Joanna Southcote), in which medical men erroneously supposed that they had felt these movements. In estimating the negative value of absence of quickening, we have to recollect that a dead child may be in the womb, and, of course, without motion; and that some anomalous cases are related, in which quickening never became perceptible, either to the mother herself, or other examiners. Etilargement of the Abdomen.—This is the sign which, in doubtful cases, oftenest attracts the attention of casual observers. Durmg the first
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