This oration, delivered at the eleventh anniversary of the Hunterian Society, February 11, 1830 ... / J.T. Conquest.

  • Conquest, J. T., 1789-1866.
Date:
[1830]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: This oration, delivered at the eleventh anniversary of the Hunterian Society, February 11, 1830 ... / J.T. Conquest. 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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    or pus. At other times, spots and patches of gangrene will be per- ceived externally ; and not unfrequently the inner surface or cavity is black, ragged, and covered veith flakes of coagulable lymph. When the disease has originated with, or been principally confined to, the peritoneal investments of the uterus, bladder, and pelvic and abdo- minal viscera, they will be agglutinated in one morbid mass, or there Avill be more or less turbid serous effusion of a dirty white colour, mixed with pus and flakes of coagulable lymph. In the chest, particularly in those cases in which respiration has been hurried from the commencement, there will be found slight effusion in the cavity of the pleura, in the bronchial tubes, and in the cellular substance of the lungs. But so anomalous is Puerperal Inflammation, that not unfre- quently the extent and variety of mischief shall be infinitely more than could have been expected, a priori, from the duration or seve- rity of symptoms during life, and only to be explained by admitting that the disease must have existed, and been making sure, though unnoticed progress before delivery ; or to the possibility of the in- flammation having run a very rapid course, and destroying in a few hours the vitality of parts which had been previously brought into such a condition, in consequence of the prostration of nervous energy, as to be unable to resist high excitement; and effusion or destruction inevitably and rapidly follows. The time allotted to this Oration will permit me only to sketch an outline of this highly interesting, though obscure disease; and in attempting to describe Puerperal Inflammation, as it is presented to us in that best of schools, the lying-in-room, I would say it attacks women irrespective of the duration, mildness, or severity of their labours, women of all ages, and during every season of the year; but the type of the inflammation will be so varied and modified by circumstances as to be scarcely recognised as the same disease in its essential character in different women, in different districts, and during peculiar constitutions of the atmosphere. It will sometimes be strictly tonic and phlogistic, and at other times atonic and typhoid. I have seen some cases in which the pulse has been full and hard