The change of life in health and disease : a clinical treatise on the diseases of the ganglionic nervous system incidental to women at the decline of life / by Edward John Tilt.

  • Tilt, Edward John, 1815-1893.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The change of life in health and disease : a clinical treatise on the diseases of the ganglionic nervous system incidental to women at the decline of life / by Edward John Tilt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    With, the exception of the few cases in which the perspira- tions were cold and clammy, this exhalation is associated with an increased production of heat, and with that irregular distribution of it which is called flushes. These occurred to 244 women out of 500; fourteen others were troubled with il dry flushes. The flushes determine the perspirations, and as they constitute the most important and habitual safety- valve of the system at the change of life, it is worth while studying them. It must have struck many, that at the change of life most women have the power of generating a more than usual amount of heat; they often want less clothing, and even in winter, leave their doors and windows wide open. Very often, however, instead of being regularly distributed, this caloric bursts forth as flushes, women feel as if something started from the epigastric region, spreading over the chest, and then over the face, which becomes suffused and hot. I have heard women compare their sensations to burning steam rising from the pit of the stomach. These flushes may be considered as cases of pathological blushing, depending on partial paralysis of the vaso-motor nerves. They may follow or precede a chill, or a momentary sensation of shivering, or sinking and faintness at the pit of the stomach, but they recur as a rule without these sensations. If the flushes do not terminate in a gentle moisture of the skin, women call them <e dry heats. The flushes may last two or three minutes, but it will sometimes take a quarter of an hour to carry off the effects of a strong wave of heat thus wafted to the surface. The number of flushes occurring in the course of the day varies extremely, and their spontaneous repetition, five or six times an hour, either by day or night, is not uncommon to women at the dodging time. Some months after cessation they frequently occur only seven or eight times in the day. This may be the case for years after cessation, and even in extreme old age, under the influence of worry or ill-health, Avithout however being so distressing as at the change of life. The recurrence of flushes so late in life is not to be