A treatise on the diseases and special hygiène of females / By Colombat de l'Isère. Translated from the French, with additions, by Charles D. Meigs.
- Marc Colombat de L'Isère
- Date:
- 1850
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A treatise on the diseases and special hygiène of females / By Colombat de l'Isère. Translated from the French, with additions, by Charles D. Meigs. 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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![excitable and the judgment less sound. Women have been found to become insane in pregnancy, some have become musicians or poets, and some have acquired a thievish propensity. Their will loses its strength ; their affections are less constant; antipathies, anger and even cruelty are occasionally met with in the sex, whose natural and inherent inclinations are marked by gentleness, goodnessfcompassion, tenderness, an exquisite sensibility, and the most eager desire to con- sole the unhappy. The womb having acquired, in its new estate, an incomparably greater vitality, there occurs, in the pregnant woman, a considerable number of modifications, both anatomical and physiological. Some of these modifications, constituting in themselves the preg- nancy, must be respected: but others of them, that are merely sym- pathetic or physiological, are divided into three classes. In the first class are placed those that we call nervous, to wit, vomiting, syncope, depraved appetite, nausea, anorexia, vigilance, toothache, ptyalism, headache, palpitations, tinnitus of the ears, deafness, mastodynia, cough, dyspnoea, pains in the limbs and groins, heartburn, diarrhoea, constipation and nervous colic. Those of the second class, which we denominate plethoric, are noticed in the second stage of pregnancy, that is, from the end of the third to the fifth month. Among these may be mentioned uterine haemorrhage, epistaxis, piles; sometimes varices and oedema of the inferior extremities: haemoptoe, cough, dyspnoea; and, lastly, abortion. The modifications of the third class, which we call mechanical, are met with towards the close of pregnancy: in this list we place ante- version and retroversion of the womb, hernia of the womb, its pro- lapsion, its obliquity, its relaxation, to which must be added moles, abortion, colic, dysury, constipation, dyspnoea, varix, piles and oedema, with a number of other affections which neither can nor ought to be treated, but whose too violent symptoms may be palliated by reason- able methods, at the risk of seeing them reproduced at every step of the gestation. [M. Colombat ought not to have included in a list of affections met with near the close of gestation, either the retroversion of the womb, then an imposssible occurrence, or abortions, which are always supposed of the em- bryo and not of the child.—M.] After having been for nine months exposed to all the inconveni- ences of pregnancy, the woman at length reaches the term of utero- gestation, when the foetus and after-birth, are with severe pain expelled. At this moment a complete cessation takes place of the connection of the foetus with its mother; the womb contracts, the walls of the abdomen shrink back to their pristine form and dimensions, the breasts enlarge, a secretion of milk takes place, and at last all the organs recover their natural estate. The diseases of lying-in women are numerous, some of them being chirurgical and some medical. Among the former are found lacera- tions of the womb or perineum, contusions of the vagina and vulva, prolapsus of the rectum, vesico and recto-vaginal fistula, inversion of](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21029313_0042.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
