A handbook of uterine therapeutics and of diseases of women / by Edward John Tilt.

  • Tilt, Edward John, 1815-1893.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A handbook of uterine therapeutics and of diseases of women / by Edward John Tilt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    82/332 (page 70)
    with extract of hyoscyamus makes an excellent suppository to be introduced into the bowels; it soothes without con- stipating, like opium ; indeed, in France, the extract of bella- donna, in very small proportions, enters into the composition of some purgative pills. It is best to use sulphate of atropia for vaginal suppositories. Aconite.—The tincture of aconite is quite strong enough for medical purposes. Diluted with equal quantities of water, or even undiluted, a rag soaked in it may be applied to the seat of pain and covered with oil-silk. Veratria.—This is useful as an external application in neu- ralgia : internally it acts more powerfully than digitalis. Chloroform.—The inhalation of chloroform until the attain- ment of complete insensibility is sometimes necessary to investigate thoroughly uterine disease in highly hysterical women, in whom it would be otherwise impossible to do so; but it would be very wrong to seek in chloroform an excuse for roughness and want of patience, and I have known it to have been thus given where it was not wanted. In the same way, chloroform has been given to solve the spasms of the abdominal muscles, and cause the sudden collapse of what was at first supposed to be an ovarian tumour. I have been told by my friend Dr. Duncan Stewart, that, in dysentery, which so often causes miscarriage in India, and death in child- bed, the inhalation of chloroform, so as to affect the brain without producing insensibility, has been found invaluable when other remedies had failed to allay the insupportable tenesmus that impels patients to waste their failing energies in efforts to pass faeces. I often follow the same plan to relieve tenesmus, whether it affects the womb, the bladder, or rectum, and also for vaginal pruritus when very distressing. I have likewise ordered it in a variety of anomalous cerebral symptoms of a neuralgic character, with excellent results. I pour one or two drachms of chloroform on the corner of a pocket-handkerchief, hold it to the patient's nostrils, and