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
Catalogue details

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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    of forty-five or fifty years. This correspondent duration of the re- productive age is what Rod. a Castro, a Portuguese physician, who practised towards the close of the sixteenth century, referred to in the Tract, de Mulieb. Morb., lib. h., in these Latin verses:— Adde decern ternis, mulierum menstrua cernis Ad quinquaginta durat purgatio tota. Samples, however, have been recorded of a much later fecundity ; for example, Pliny, the naturalist, says that Cornelia, of the family of the Scipios, became the mother of Valerius Saturninus at the age of sixty-two. Vallescus de Tarento, in his Course of Physic, published in 1518, says that he attended a woman in labour who was sixty- seven years old. The great Baron Haller mentions a woman still regular at seventy, and brought to bed at that age. I myself saw in the little town of Walse, department of the Ardeche, a woman who was very regular, and who was confined at sixty-one, and I may add that one of my relatives, the mother of ten children, who resided in the department of Seine and Oise, where she died in 1832, never ceased from the age of eighteen to be subject to a sanguine discharge, which took place regularly every month to the seventy-third year. And lastly, M. Orfila has informed us, in his lectures, of a fact still more extraordinary. A woman, according to the learned professor, who had had seven children, became pregnant of her first child at the age of forty-seven, gave birth to her last at sixty, was regular to her ninety-ninth, and died at 114. [M. Brierre de Boismont, at p. 209, says, It is generally observed that the cessation takes place in this country (France) at about forty-five, sooner or later. The fact is true, but I think the appreciation of it would be more perfect in view of a tabular statement, indicating the different periods of the change of life. I have collected 183 cases of women in whom the menses had ceased, and here are the results. 21 years 2 24 26 27 28 29 31 3 32 2 34 4 35 6 36 7 37 years 4 38 ic 7 39 (< 1 40 (i 18 41 << 10 42 (i 7 43 <( 4 44 (( 13 45 / 13 46 <( 9 47 t( 13 48 years 8 49 a 7 50 a 12 51 << 4 52 M 8 53 U 2 54 (( 5 55 (« 2 56 u 2 57 tt 2 60 tt 1 Total 181—M.] It often happens that the discharge is suddenly suppressed ; but it generally ceases by degrees, and this gradual extinction in some cases