Essays on the puerperal fever and other diseases peculiar to women : Selected from the writings of British authors previous to the close of the eighteenth century / Edited by Fleetwood Churchill.

  • Churchill, Fleetwood, 1808-1878.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays on the puerperal fever and other diseases peculiar to women : Selected from the writings of British authors previous to the close of the eighteenth century / Edited by Fleetwood Churchill. 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 patients were attacked on the first, second, or third day after delivery; symptoms of inflammation of the peritoneum and uterus were always present; the lochia disappeared immediately, or in a few hours, and the breasts were flaccid. Professor Baer is said to have detected, on examination with the finger, marks of gangrenous disorganization of the cervix uteri. One patient died in six hours after she was attacked, others in twelve or twenty-four hours. u The patients in the last stage presented all the symptoms of effusion into the thorax and abdomen, extreme debility of the powers of life, and gradual dissolution. The very rapid putrefaction of the body after death, the dis- solved state of the blood, the strikingly soft and tender state of the whole bowels, the heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, and particu- larly of the uterus, indicated a colliquative putrescent condition of the whole system, induced by the disease. Dr. Biermayer examined the bodies of fifty-six women after death, and the following is his account of the state of the womb: The uterus, in all cases little contracted, was more or less red externally, even in those where delivery had taken place long before, and the abdomen was not otherwise in an unhealthy condition. The sub- stance or body of the uterus was always flabby, tender, easily broken down by the finger ; in two cases, full of small holes or cavities filled with stinking blood. In two cases the uterus, on account of the tenderness of its substance, had burst during delivery at the neck; in the one case, the rupture was four inches in length, and in the other, one inch and a half. The cavity of the uterus was found filled with fetid air several times, and particularly in the syphilitic women. Its internal surface appeared generally covered with offensive concretions, ichor, or mucus, only seldom with offensive viscid blood. Beneath this it was always reel, discoloured, often as if slightly eroded or ulcerated ; the internal membrane often eroded and destroyed. Thus, in a woman, set. 18, who had been delivered three weeks, in whom the abdomen was not distended, nor contained fluid, and there was nothing dis- eased in the abdominal cavity, except the liver and spleen being flabby and tender, the uterus was entirely ulcerated on its internal surface, like the internal surface of one of the large intestines when covered with ulcerations. She died on the twenty-ninth day. On the fundus of the uterus there generally remained particles of the placenta and membrana decidua in the form of putrid shreds. The colour of the cervix uteri was constantly darker than the rest, and especially at the mouth of the womb, which was likewise much dilated, and often as if destroyed with loss of substance, often cracked as if rent. The vagina was generally preternaturally red.1 Dr. Campbell has described the epidemic which prevailed in Edin- burgh in 1821-22.2 It was in the latter end of March (1821), 1 Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. xxii., p. 85. 3 On Puerperal Fever, p. 17.