Fibroid tumors complicating pregnancy and labor / by Frank W. Lynch.
- Lynch, Frank W. (Frank Worthington), 1871-1945
- Date:
- 1913
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Fibroid tumors complicating pregnancy and labor / by Frank W. Lynch. 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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![\ Reprinted from the American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children, Vol, LXVIII. No. 3, 1913.] FIBROID TUMORS COMPLICATING PREGNANCY AND LABOR.* BY FRANK W. LYNCH, M. D., Assistant Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Rush Medical College; Attending Gynecologist and Obstetrician, Presbyterian Hospital, Chicago, 111. History.—Prior to the appearance of Levret’s work, in 1749, there had appeared mention only of isolated cases of labor complicated by uterine tumors. The first record of what appears as a fibroid associated with pregnancy is one of the illustrative cases of Hippo- crates’ Fifth Book of Epidemics, according to Lefour, and is cited as follows: Forty days after labor the patient spontaneously ex- pelled a fleshy tumor. The abdomen again became flat and the flatus disappeared. The discharges and the fetid blood ceased. The woman recovered. The Father of Medicine regarded this as an instance of superfetation.* Corradi, in his history of obstetrics, refers to the first observation directly of interest to the obstetrician. He reports how, in 1530, Berenger de Carpi, together with Leon de Laenga, saw a woman in labor who died from the complications of a large fibroid tumor. In 1646 Fabrice de Hilden records an observation in which a fibroid of the cervix was mistaken for a fetus, since it presented in advance of the head and blocked the labor, which lasted six days and was terminated by rupture of the uterus. The autopsy showed that the child’s head had passed through into the abdomen. Paullinus, in 1686, cites the case of a woman who remained in labor during three days. Believing that the tumor was another child, they ex- erted traction upon it. The patient died the next day and at the autopsy it was disclosed that in the orifice of the cervix there was a fibroid tumor the size of a fetal head. In 1715, Amand refers to a fibroid tumor which was mistaken for the head of a child, and effect- *Read at the joint meeting of the Obstetrical Society of Philadelphia and the Chicago Gynecological Society, Philadelphia, May 9, 1913. *My translation from Lefour. Copyright, William Wood & Company.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22466459_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
