The Dublin practice of midwifery / By Henry Maunsell, M. D., with notes and additions by Chandler R. Gilman.

  • Henry Maunsell
Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Dublin practice of midwifery / By Henry Maunsell, M. D., with notes and additions by Chandler R. Gilman. 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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    CHAPTER XXIII. riKKPERAL MANIA. This occurs in two forms, the maniacal and mel- ancholic, and makes its appearance, generally, with- in the first few days after labour. A similar disease may also happen when the woman has been ex- hausted by a continuance of the process of nursing longer than is suitable to her strength. The disease is most likely to attack persons of a nervous sus- ceptible temperament, and whose minds have been shaken by depressing passions, or other causes of mental emotion. A large proportion of cases, Dr. Gooch states, have occurred in patients in whose families disordered mind had already ap- peared. With respect to the cause, nothing more explicit can be stated than the opinion of the same distin- guished writer, that it exists in the peculiar nervous excitement which, more or less, accompanies all the actions of the generative system. [In some cases a fright experienced during gesta- tion, will seem to have given a shock to the mind, the effects of which will hang about the patient du- ring the remainder of gestation, and after labour burst forth in the form of puerperal mania. All such cases of fright during gestation should be carefully watched.]