A compendious system of midwifery : chiefly designed to facilitate the inquiries of those who may be pursuing this branch of study ... / by William P. Dewees.

  • Dewees, William P. (William Potts), 1768-1841.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A compendious system of midwifery : chiefly designed to facilitate the inquiries of those who may be pursuing this branch of study ... / by William P. Dewees. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Lamar Soutter Library, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

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    144. And if there be a plethora, it must be occasioned by five or six ounces of blood; yet, it is well known, that if five times that quantity were drawn just before the period was expected, or during its flow, that it would neither prevent the eruption, nor diminish the quantity that would otherwise be expended, Ol this I am certain, from the following facts: Many years since, I witnessed a singular periodical hemorrhage, which was of se- vei-al months' duration, from the ear of a young lady; it would commence at about 11 o'clock, A.M., every day, with the utmost regularity, and, after giving issue to an ounce or two of blood, it would spontaneously stop, and not recur until the same hour of the next day: yet this young lady menstruated with the utmost regularity, both as to period and quantity. It may not be un- interesting to state, that this affection was cured by the ap- plication of a blister near the part, after very many other reme- dies had fruitlessly been tried. Another case fell under my ob- servation, which goes still farther to prove that general plethora has no agency in the production of the catamenia. A young lady asked my advice for a daily discharge of blood from the anus, of several years' continuance: she would lose, very fre- quently, from half a pint to a pint at a time, and smaller* quan- tities almost daily; she, of course, was feeble, and far removed from plethora; yet she menstruated regularly, and never em- ployed less than a week for the discharge. 145. To the second, it may be answered, that men, however plethoric, have no such compensating discharge.* To the third * Dr. Burdacb, a German writer, in a work enlitlecl Physiology as an Expe- rimental Science, considers menstruation as depending' vipon causes either ge- neral or local. Its general cause, he says, *'is evidently to be found in the Circumstance of the blood being so abundantly generated by the female system, as to produce, every four weeks, an excess, which requires to be in this manner evacuated. To prove this, l.v; has but renewed the old doctrine of Galen, just noticed, and at once assumes a principle which remains to be proved; namely, that the female system generates a tu])erfluous quantity of blood, and requires to be removed from the system by an office of the uterus. V/e deny that any satisfac- tory pi'oof has yet been offered in support of this assertion, and for the reasons assigned above; for Dr. D. only employs the arguments jubt mentioned to sustain this hypothesis, and which, we think, are readily disproved. Dr. B. accounts for this tendency to plethora in the female, by referring it to a greater activity of the productive powers generally, and consequently of san- guification existing in the female than in the male system; for the extent of the menstrual discharge has an immediate relation with the activity of the productive powers. This we utterly deny, as we have known many very pletJioric females who have had sparing menses, atid many that laboured under even, a suppression 6*