Woman: her diseases and remedies : a series of letters to his class.

  • Charles Delucena Meigs
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Woman: her diseases and remedies : a series of letters to his class. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    trunks and branches of the subclavians and carotids; the consequence of which is an augmented arterial determination to the head and upper extremities. If you permit this morbid determination to continue unmitigated, the slow but sure foundation is laid for puerperal apoplexy and eclampsia. The womqji should be bled and dieted in a prudent and careful way, and all massive obstructions, arising from a surcharged state of the colon ought to be obviated by gentle laxatives. I may incidentally remark that some writers are disposed to attribute the convulsive attacks of women in labor to an excess of the fibrinous element developed in the blood of pregnant women; but I advise you to reflect whether the explanation I have above given, does not explain the occurrence of such disorders far more satisfactorily. I do not think you can reasonably expect to cure a considerable oedema by venesection; yet that it may be moderated by the use of the lancet and kept within safe bounds I do not doubt. In some patients, you will find one or both of the labia swollen and painful from varices affecting the veins of the parts. The diagnosis is easily made by the Touch, and may be verified by inspection. There is nothing to be done, I believe, except to direct horizontal rest during the pregnancy. I have had two patients who always suffered exces- sively from this varix while pregnant, but only then. I shall close this letter here, with the design of speaking to you in the next, of certain other disorders to which the labia are subject;— and I am very truly your friend and servant, C. D. M. LETTER VI. WOUNDS, LACERATIONS OF LABIUM. Gentlemen: I design in this letter to say something as to certain very distressing injuries of the labia, suffered by parturient women, and which are caused by the extreme tension of the labia themselves, or bj the tension of other parts, whose accidents or diseases implicate these external textures. You are acquainted with the origin of the pudic artery from the ischiadic, in some individuals, and in others from the interna] iliac: and you are aware, that this vessel runs upward on the inner face of the ramus of the ischium, and sends branches forth to supply the external