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.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    and rarely, if ever, by convulsion of the muscles of the face. I’he pulse, though small and frequent during the paroxysm, regains its natural state on the fit disappearing. The hysterical species, in its mode of attack, duration, degree, violence, and the perfect recovery of the patient on the subsidence of the fit, is so very different from eclampsia, that a man must want common sagacity to confound the one with the other. As for the apoplectic species, without sanguineous effusion, it is really a dis- tinction without a material difference; it differs only in degree, and usually appears during labour. Indeed it may be doubted whether there are any decidedly pathogno- mic symptoms by which this form of apoplexy can with certainty be distinguished from the strictly epileptic seizure. Not only may simple apoplexy arise from mere fulness of the blood-vessels, but many of the symptoms which cha- racterise epilepsy, including the wounding of the tongue, may be produced by an effusion of blood. I have, more- over, recorded a fatal case of convulsions, attended wdth sanguineous effusion, and yet the symptoms were less formidable than in a similar case accompanied merely by a very slight effusion of serum. The term “puerperal convulsions” should be confined to cases occurring in paroxysms affecting the contractile tissues generally, and, in many respects, resembling epilepsy, although the attack cannot be regarded either as apoplectic, epileptic, or tetanic, but partaking more or less of the characters of each of these diseases. The circumstance of blood- letting proving so efficacious in puerperal convulsions, militates strongly against its genuine epileptic character, for bleeding in common epilepsy is usually injurious; neither is the subject of puerperal convulsions left ex- ])oscd to attacks of chronic epilepsy. Dr. Hamilton ]>re- fers retaining the old term eclampsia, the word still used