The medical, surgical and hygenic treatment of diseases of women : especially those causing sterility, the disorders and accidents of pregnancy and painful and difficult labor / by Edwin M. Hale.

  • Hale, Edwin M. (Edwin Moses), 1829-1899.
Date:
1880, ©1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical, surgical and hygenic treatment of diseases of women : especially those causing sterility, the disorders and accidents of pregnancy and painful and difficult labor / by Edwin M. Hale. 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.

    369/388 (page 367)
    to those of other parts of the body. The mental state of the patient affords valuable mdications for Pulsatilla. With irre- gular, inefficient pains the woman often weeps, complains, is greatly agitated, and cannot be encouraged. Here Pulsatilla will be indicated. Aconite will be useful if the patient has an uncontrollable anxiety and fear of death, the skin is cold, and the pulse small and feeble (primary), or she becomes hot, feverish, with hard small pulse, thirsty, delirious, and has slight convulsive mo- tions. (Secondary.) Ignatia covers many of the symptoms of this condition. Dioscorea may prove useful, especially if the uterine muscu- lar-cramps suddenly cease, and appear in the bowels, hands, or feet. (See Symptomatology of New Remedies.) Before closing this chapter I cannot omit to mention a remedy, which under certain circumstances proves most efficient and harmless in the treatment oifalse labor, or irregular uterine contraction. I allude to Opium and its preparations. They are not homoeo- pathic to this condition, any more than Chloroform or Ether, but act as palliatives, giving the tortured organ needful rest, after which it takes up its normal action. Cazeaux says: Under the influence of Opium, given in the form of enema (into the rectum), twenty or thirty drops in a few ounces of water, the pains entirely disappear in the course of half an hour. During this period the patient generally slumbers, and then the good pains, that is, the natural and regular ones, come on, and the labor terminates happily. In several cases of peculiar obstinacy, where neither the homoeopathic remedy nor Chloroform changed the unnatural character of the pains, I resorted to an enema of twenty drops of McMunn's Elixir of Opium, and the improvement set in in less than half an hour, and after an hour or two of sleep, natu- ral labor commenced in earnest. In one case, two doses, half an hour apart, of one-eighth of a grain of Morphige acetas had the same effect. (See Dr. Freeman's observations on Morphia, p. 2-4.)_ Position.—A woman in labor should not be obliged to lie in one position, unless it is appropriate, and she desires to. To