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:
1849
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.

    27/580 (page 15)
    4 of October, 1813, forty-three cases occurred to five practitioners in Sunderland, of which only five died. In all the fatal cases witnessed by Dr. Armstrong, “the most unquestionable proofs of abdominal inflammation existed.” The treatment he recommends is “ copious bleeding, imme- diately succeeded by copious purging at the outset.” Dr. Campbell mentions that puerperal fever visited the Edinburgh Lying-in Hospital a second time in 1814-15, “and of nine who were taken ill only one recovered. ... The disease prevailed throughout the city epidemically at the same time, but from all the accounts I can collect, it showed itself earlier among patients in the city than among those in the Lying-in Hospital.’”” I shall next adduce the experience of Dr. Gooch, which he | has so happily given in his admirable work.? He was appointed Physician to the Westminster Lying-in Hospital in 1812, and had abundant opportunities of mvestigating the characters of several epidemics. He states that “the cases which were so numerous in these unhealthy seasons had the common symp- toms and course of puerperal fever. They began a few days after delivery ; the leading symptoms were diffused pain and tenderness, with some swelling of the abdomen, a quick pulse, which was generally at first full and vibrating. Sometimes it was small, but still it was hard and incompressible; the skin — was hot, though not so hot as im other fevers; the tongue was white and moist, the milk was suppressed. As the disease advanced the belly became less painful but more swelled, and the breathing short; towards the end the pulse was very fre- quent and tremulous, and the skin covered with a clammy sweat; even in this state the tongue continued moist, and the mind clear, and death took place generally about the fifth day. “On opening the abdomen, which was often as large as before delivery, the intestines were found distended with air, the peritoneum was red in various parts, its surface was covered with a coat of lymph, the intestines adhered to one another, and the omentum to the intestines ; coagulable lymph was de- posited on various surfaces, especially in the depressions between 1 Facts and Observations relative to the Fever commonly called Puerperal, p. 93. ? Campbell, on Epidemic Puerperal Fever, p. 16.