On the diseases of women : including the diseases of pregnancy and childbed / by Fleetwood Churchill ; a new American edition, revised by the author, with notes and additions by D. Francis Condie.

  • Churchill, Fleetwood, 1808-1878.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the diseases of women : including the diseases of pregnancy and childbed / by Fleetwood Churchill ; a new American edition, revised by the author, with notes and additions by D. Francis Condie. 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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    The hysterical affection of different organs will be combated most successfully by counter-irritation, opiates, antispasmodics, or what are called nervous medicines, such as assafetida, musk, castor, camphor, &c, and by aloetic purgatives. Dewees recommends the tincture of the powder of guaiacum, as tend- ing to reproduce the catamenia. Upon the approach of the next period, great attention should be paid to the patient, and every means put in practice which may be likely to facilitate the normal secretion. The bowels should be kept free, the sur- face comfortably warm, and the hip bath or pediluvium used alternate nights. The strength, if necessary, must be supported by a generous but not stimulating diet. If at the proper time menstruation be established, our anxiety will be at an end; but if merely a white discharge be thrown off, we must again, during the interval, put into action all means before recommended in cases where uterine leucorrhoea is vicarious of the menses. If the white discharge persists during the interval, the case must then be treated simply as uterine leucorrhoea. But if no discharge at all, neither red nor white, appear, and if the general condition of the patient, and her freedom from local disease permit, we may have recourse to some of those specific remedies which were mentioned when considering the treatment of simple amenorrhoea. 113. (b) Chronic suppressiori of the menses may be the issue of an acute attack, or it may arise from the gradual supervention of delicate health from disease of the ovaries, uterus, or other parts; it may also be the termination of the menstrual function, either before or at the usual age- The quantity of the secretion may diminish, and the time become irre- gular and uncertain, until at length the uterus altogether ceases to act. This is one way in which the disease comes on; but we find more frequently, I think, that the menses are supplanted by the white dis- charge. The menses diminish in quantity, and become of a paler color and with shorter intervals, and then a menstrual period arrives, during which the patient finds the excreted fluid perfectly colorless—the next period again being marked by the colored discharge. Thus the patient may go on alternating, with a gradual but steady diminution in the quantity and color, until the leucorrhoea becomes permanently established. 114. Symptoms.—As to the symptoms to which this chronic suppres- sion gives rise; when it is merely the subsidence of an acute attack, we shall find pain in the head, side, and back, deficient appetite, and a failure of the vital powers, ending in a confirmed deterioration of health, most favorable to the incursion of some of the fatal organic diseases peculiar to the climate. When the menses are superseded by leucorrhoea, the symptoms of that disorder will be present. If the menses neither occur during suckling nor for some time after- wards, and the health appears to suffer, we should bear in mind, that in consequence of inflammation following the delivery, some portion of the