The pathology and treatment of childbed : a treatise for physicians and students. ... From the second German edition with many additional notes by the author / by Dr. F. Winckel; translated by James R. Chadwick.

Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The pathology and treatment of childbed : a treatise for physicians and students. ... From the second German edition with many additional notes by the author / by Dr. F. Winckel; translated by James R. Chadwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    tlie coaofula disappear when proper pressure is made upon the fundus uteri. Machen recommended cold water injections into a beef-bladder which had been put into the uterus. This advice is, however, not to be followed, for the uterus, whose contraction we were seeking to promote, would by this means be again distended. Plugging the uterus with linen, as tried by Blease, is equally worthless. The use of electricity is rarely practicable in private practice, because it takes too much time to send for the instruments. There is, more- over, a dearth of observations as to its value in these emergencies. Plugging the vagina with cotton, oj' with the colpeurynter filled with ice-water, is insufficient in the most profuse hemorrhages, harmful, and only suitable for certain cases to be cited hereafter. The catheter must be passed in retention of urine and extreme distension of the bladder. It is not well to apply the child at once to the breast after severe metrorrhagifB, as advocated by Rigby, since this is scarcely practicable without moving the woman, and absolute repose is the first factor in the arrest of bemorrhage. Earle’s attempts to set up this irritation artificially, by compressing the breast, or allowing the nurse to grasp the nipples and draw them out, is a useless w^aste of time when the flow is profuse, and super- fluous when it is sli2:ht. o 2. Ergot and rubbing or kneading the uterus are contra- indicated when the uterus is irregularly contracted, or possibly a stricture is present, and the patient complains of severe after- pains. Here antispasmodics are in order, such as Dover’s powder, laudanum, an emetic, or a mustard plaster over the sacrum, after the clots have been taken from the uterus. Ene- mata with twenty drops of laudanum, an emulsion of bitter almonds with extract of hyoscyamus (gtt. 20), are of great service in most such cases. This is the class of cases, by no means uncommon, which has satisfied so many practitioners that there is no better hemostatic remedy in metrorrhagise than opium, and especially laudanum. 3. Finally, when the uterus is firmly contracted, and the external genitals and vagina are not the seat of the bleeding, it must arise froiu the cervix, and will not be amenable to internal treatment alone. Styptics are then to be employed