On spurious, feigned, and concealed pregnancy / by Thomas More Madden.

  • Thomas More Madden
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On spurious, feigned, and concealed pregnancy / by Thomas More Madden. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ON SPURIOUS, FEIGNED, AND concealp:]d pregnancy. Spurious pregnancy is one of the most interesting subjects connected with obstetric medicine. The diagnosis between true pregnancy and pseudocyesis,* including in this term cases of pretended as well as spurious gestation, is oftentimes a matter of considerable difficulty and of the highest importance in a medico-legal, as well as in an obstetric point of view. Hence, the following particulars of several cases of spurious, feigned, and concealed pregnancy, together with the observations suggested by them, may, perhaps, be considered of some interest. The comparatively large number of cases of spurious pregnancy which has come under my observation within the last few years leads me to believe that this morbid condition is of more frequent occurrence than is generally supposed. Nor is it confined to any class of society, as some writers think who speak of it as peculiarly affecting, idle and overfed, sterile, elderly, married women of the richer class. On the contrary, a large proportion of the cases of pseudocyesis, on the clinical study of which ih'is memoir is based, came before me at the Dispensary for Diseases of Women, attached to the Lying-in Hospital. The period of life at which pseudocyesis most frequently occurs is a point on which very eminent authorities differ. Thus the late Sir J. Simpson, speaking on this subject, in his Clinical Lectures on Diseases of Women, says :—I feel pretty certain that the disease occurs at least as often during the UtaI year after marrifige as at any later period.'' Dr. Churchill has * VevShs, a lie, and Ku^irii, prt'^^nancy. Meflical Tiruefi and (luzette, S.^ptumber 185J1, p. 'i'J.'i,