On diseases of women and ovarian inflammation : in relation to morbid menstruation, sterility, pelvic tumours, and affections of the womb / by Edward John Tilt.

  • Edward John Tilt
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On diseases of women and ovarian inflammation : in relation to morbid menstruation, sterility, pelvic tumours, and affections of the womb / by Edward John Tilt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    glionic system with its healthy function—fevers with menstruation. ]Nature gives its warrant to our comparison, for in both fever and menstruation, the critical discharge is frequently met Avith in the urine. Om' attention was first drawn to the subject by a patient telling us that she always knew when she was going to be 'poorly, by her urine being so very muddy ; and indeed many women state that their water is generally thick and muddy two or three days previous to menstruation. We have found the sediment to be composed of phosphates. Dr. Sigby has remarked that the urine of dysmenorrhceic patients frequently contains lithates, as it does also in cessation cases; but this inquiry could only be carried out in hospital practice, and is certainly Avorth doing, for who will not admit with Dr. Holland, that although much light has been throAvn on the functions of the kidneys, still the relation of the lu^ine in its quantity and properties to the various clianges occurring in other parts of the body, still offer sin- gular difficulties to the physiologist. The administration of alkalis, so useful an addition to the treat- ment of such cases, improves digestion, and by their action on the blood they doubtless neutralise some of its noxious elements. Their utility will be still further understood, if it be admitted, that not- withstanding the use of diuretics, the urine previous to, and at cessa- tion, is often secreted in smaller quantity, and deposits abundantly. We often give liquor potassfe or the bicarbonate of soda, now called the sesquicarbonate in the new Pharmacopoeia of the College of Physicians, because it is a convenient form of administering it, cheap, and not un- palatable. After the first few days, vre give it onl)'' once or twice a day. Thus have we passed in rapid review the many evidences of that species of fermentation admitted to exist at the menstrual periods by Bayle and Etmuller, by De Grraaf and Van Helmont, of the peculiar commotion of the blood which Democritus had in view when he talked of a fervor uterinus, and we have seen that the menstrual flow, far from being a passive discharge, to be accounted for by mechanical causes, must be more than ever considered a critical termination, often preceded by mucous discharges from the generative and intes- tinal canals, and determined by the complicated nervous phenomena Avhich originates in the ganglionic nervous system. No one has hitherto attempted to follow out each of the manifes- tations of tlie ovarian nisus in all the various pliases of a healthy or a morbid action of the reproductive organs; and we hope that our careful sorting and classification of the eftects of the reproductive organs on the system, and the philosophical deductions to which they haAe naturally led, may somewhat tend to raise the standard of ob- stetric literature to a level of that of many other branches of medical science, and also contribute to the elucidation of many obscure forms of disease. Having shown the pliysiological and varied morbid action of the ovaries on the system, we are thus prepared to prove how it is influenced by the ovaries Avhen the}^ become inflamed.