Obstetrics for nurses / by Joseph B. De Lee.

  • Joseph DeLee
Date:
1933
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Obstetrics for nurses / by Joseph B. De Lee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    like a field of wheat in the wind, thus propelling towaid the outlet any object (in nature, the egg) lying on the surface. All the organs in the pelvis, particularly the uterus and vagina, are richly supplied with blood-vessels. This is the reason that lacerations, produced during labor, bleed so freely, and sometimes fatally. The nurse should also remember that there is a cleai passage from the external world up through the uterus and tubes into the peritoneal cavity. Thus germs deposited in the vagina may wander upward and cause peritonitis and other forms of infection, this beside the possibility of the direct inoculation of bacteria into the tissues by way of wounds, all of which emphasizes the necessity of abso¬ lute cleanliness (asepsis) in the care of the pregnant, parturient, and puerperal woman. The layers of peritoneum covering the anterior and posterior walls of the uterus meet at the sides of the organ and form flattened bands stretching to the side walls of the pelvis, containing vessels, nerves, and a little fat, and called the broad ligaments. These have great importance in obstetrics. Attached to the posterior side of each broad ligament, and connected with one of the fimbriae or stream¬ ers of the fallopian tube, is a little body, in shape and size like an almond, hard, fibrous, silvery white, and dimpled this is the ovary. This tiny organ has many functions, each of tremendous influence on the growth and life of the woman, and it also produces the ova or eggs for the continuation of the race. The Bladder.—This organ (Fig. 14) lies in front of the uterus, behind the pubis. From the bladder, lying along the side of the cervix, the ureters run up out of the pelvis to the kidneys. In front of the vagina, just behind and below the pubis, lies the urethra, a small tube about the size of a lead-pencil, leading from the bladder to open in the upper part of the vulva. The bladder empties itself through the urethra. The urethra ends in the vestibule
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