Fibroid tumours of the uterus complicating pregnancy : a record of personal experience / by Charles J. Cullingworth.

  • Charles James Cullingworth
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Fibroid tumours of the uterus complicating pregnancy : a record of personal experience / by Charles J. Cullingworth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    1 said that he would never reproach us if the event proved unfortunate. The patient and her luisband thereupon re- turned to their home in the country. On the 20th of April tlie family practitioner came up to towm, accompanied by the husband, to report that the swelling had undei*gone a very sudden increase in size, reaching up to the costal margins, and that the patient was in such severe pain as to necessitate the administration of morphia. I expressed the opinion that the symptoms were probably due either to alteration of position normal increase in the growth of the tumour, or to continuous and painful uterine contraction, the result of some concealed intra-uterine ha3morrhage, in which latter case spontaneous abortion might be expected to follow. ^Meantime I ad- vised that a vaginal examimition should be made, in case abortion should be threatening, and that under any circum- stances there should be as little inteiderence as possible. I further recommended that evei*ything should be in readiness for hot douching in case of need, and for packing the uterine cavity if douching failed, and I arranged to go down immediately if wanted. Nothing more was heard of the case until November, when Mrs. Garrett Anderson very courteously forwarded me a letter from the patient^s husband, in which he announced that his wife had been confined of a fine healthy boy on the fifth of that month, and that when writing, four days after- wards, he was able to report that she was doing wonderfully well. A trained nurse (he informed Mrs. Anderson) had been in almost constant attendance throughout the preg- nancy, and the patient had always been carried up and down stairs, and had only been out of dooi'S in a bath-chair. 1 thought,the letter somewhat naively continued, 1 should like to let you know what wonders a perfectly (piiet life and Nature have done for my wife.^^ A few days later the doctor wrote to tell mo that luckily nothing untoward happened, there being practi- cally no ha3morrhage to speak of.’^ He was rather alarmed for the first thirty-six hours after labour by the rapidity of the pulse, 120 to 140, and by a certain amount of blanching. Both these signs had irn])roved. 44ie tumour was then