A manual of medical jurisprudence for India : including the outline of a history of crime against the person in India / by Norman Chevers.

  • Chevers, Norman, 1818-1886.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of medical jurisprudence for India : including the outline of a history of crime against the person in India / by Norman Chevers. 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.

    754/902 (page 718)
    properties prevails amongst all classes of women in Southern India,— so much so that they assert that, if a pregnant woman partake of them, even in moderate quantities, Abortion will be the probable result. This popular belief is noticed in many of the reports received from India. In these it is also stated that the milky juice of the plant is applied locally to the os uteri with the view of inducing abortion. Dr. Waring adds that facts in support of the alleged emmenagogue pro- perties of the papaw are still wanting. Pine-apple.—The belief that the pleasant Anaras is an active abortive, even when eaten by pregnant cattle, is so general, that Moulvie Tumeez Khan Khan Bahadoor tells me that he tried the experiment of feeding gravid cows and goats upon this fruit, but without effect. A note which I have from Baboo Koylas Chunder Chatterjee renders this matter plain. He said that acid fruits are regarded as abortives—see a notice of the tamarind pulp (a most intense and very unwholesome acid when fresh) at p. 714. He knew a case in which a woman aborted at an advanced stage of pregnancy by eating (with that intention) about two pounds of ripe pine-apple. This fruit is rendered unwholesome by the presence of a very strong fibre which acts as a mechanical irritant on the bowels. I had under my own care an English lady who died of dysentery, after having aborted, at about the fifth month of pregnancy. The cause of her illness appeared to be the ravenous eatiug of raw pine-apple. In July 1852, the Deputy Commissioner of Jubbulpore despatched a fluid, obtained by Dr. A. Wilkinson, from the stomach of a Brahmin woman, who had asserted, in her dying declaration, that she suffered from the effects of Arsenic administered to her by her paramour to pro- duce Abortion. Di*. Wilkinson pronounced his belief that the matter found in the stomach contained Arsenic; this was confirmed by the Che- mical Examiner's analysis.* In a case which occurred at Tipperah in 1848, the prisoners are reported to have administered to a woman, who was pregnant by one of them, a mixture of red sulphuret of arsenic, white oxide of arsenic, blue * In 1848, a Tipperah man gave his mistress poison, with the view, as he said, of procuring Abortion, but which caused her death in a few hours. The poison had previously been used by him to kill rats, so that he was well aware of its effects.—Police Report, Lower Pro- vinces, 1848, p. 37. Mr. Brown, of Weston-on-Trent, reported the case of a young woman, twenty-four years of age, who was supposed to have died of peritonitis after prema- ture delivery. It was found that she had been the subject of ulceration of the stomach produced by the action of arsenic (probably taken to induce abortion), which was detected in that organ by chemical analysis (Association Journal, October 7, 1850). Mr. Carter, of Newbury, referred to Dr. Taylor the case of a female, aged twenty-two years, who took a large dose of arsenic when she had passed the fifth month of pregnancy. She died in less than seven hours, purged and vomiting, but did not abort. See also Taylor, p. 782.