Lectures on midwifery and the forms of disease peculiar to women and children : delivered to the members of the Botanico-Medical College of Ohio / by A. Curtis.

  • Curtis, Alva, 1797-1881.
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on midwifery and the forms of disease peculiar to women and children : delivered to the members of the Botanico-Medical College of Ohio / by A. Curtis. 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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    if! to prevent the excess of those means, from doing any injury, it not to turn it into other channels Tor good. The organs alluded to arc termed Uterus and Mamma and the secretions, Menses and Milk. Altera formal array of the most plausible hypotheses which have been invented to account for the existence, nature, uses and peri- odical returns of the menses, Dr. W. P. Dewees, Professor of Mid- wifery in the University of Pennsylvania, concludes, (page 67,) From what has just been said, it appears that, hitherto, nothing satisfactory has been advanced upon this curious subject—It yet remains for some future llaller or Hunter to enrich medical sci- ence with a rational explanation of it. Perhaps the principal reason why this explanation should be referred to a Haller or a Hunter, in preference to Dr. Dewees, is, that Haller and Hunter rejected the trammels of medical au- thority, observed, considered and reasoned for themselves, and dared to publish what they discovered; though, as Hervey says, The hatred and envy of physicians should swell against them as a legion of devils against virtue; and the whole society should dart their malice at them and torture them with all the calumnies ima- ginable, without sticking at any thing that should destroy them root and branch. Now, though I do not pretend to possess the splendid talents or attainments of a Haller or a Hunter, yet I do claim the same right to the untrammeled use of the little share I have; and, as all I conceive necessary to the task, is a careful observation of what almost any one can see, and a sufficient control of language to express what I think, I shall make the bold attempt, and leave the decision of its correctness to others who can see and think as well as I. And I shall be quite as indifferent to the consequent charges of ignorance or quackery against me, as formerly was Haller or Hunter. The principal object in the peculiar structure of the female body, was its adaptation to the continuance of its species. The production occasionally of the embryo of another self, a sort of parasite that should be sustained awhile by the strength of her own system, required the establishment in woman, of peculiar or- gans, and also of periodical secretions which, when not applied to the objects to which they are adapted, should be discharged in such a manner as to inflict no injury on the organs by which they are secreted. For ten or a dozen, and sometimes sixteen or eighteen years, these secretions find full employment in contributing to the growth of the body whose maturity, on that account, is generally accom- plished several years earlier in females than in males.