Volume 1

Facts and cases in obstetric medicine, with observations on some of the most important diseases incidental to females / By John T. Ingleby.

  • Ingleby, J. T. (John Thomas), 1794-1845.
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Facts and cases in obstetric medicine, with observations on some of the most important diseases incidental to females / By John T. Ingleby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    242/318 (page 226)
    additional firmness. Burns merely observes—“ If inver- sion be discovered early, the uterus may be replaced.” And, again,—‘‘ If inversion have not been discovered early it is more difficult, nay, sometimes impossible to reduce it, owing chiefly to the contraction of the os uteri.” These statements are rather indeterminate. Dr. Hamilton remarks :—‘‘ Cases of partial inversion of the uterus after delivery, are, in the present improved state of practice, rare occurrences, and when they do happen, they generally prove immediately fatal. In the whole course of the author’s practice, he has not met with more than six or seven instances where the patient sur- vived the accident above an hour or two.”* Influenced too implicitly by general opinion, practitioners seem to have yielded to despair, and generally consigned the patient to her fate. Several very competent practitioners were called to one of these accidents the fourth day after delivery, but no attempt was made to restore the organ to its natural state. Some months afterwards the patient was placed under my care—I acquired fresh interest in these unhappy cases. I hada recollection that White re- turned the inversion at the end of the second hour, and that Denman always failed four hours after it occurred. But on conversing with Mr. Wynter, a highly respectable practitioner of West Bromwich, I ascertained that he once succeeded in restoring the uterus at the end of twenty- four hours; and I had a distinct recollection of the late Mr. Kinder Wood having mentioned to me a very similar instance. [This case is alluded to by Mr. Dickenson. The inversion was returned two days after. delivery.] I had also notes of two cases, the circumstances * Pract. Obs. p. 49 and seq.