A dissertation on the puerperal fever : delivered at a public examination for the degree of bachelor of medicine, before the Reverend Joseph Willard, S.T.D. president, the medical professors, and the governors of the University at Cambridge, in America / by Peter de Sales la Terriere, from Canada.

  • Laterrière, Pierre de Sales, 1747-1815.
Date:
MDCCLXXXIX [1789]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A dissertation on the puerperal fever : delivered at a public examination for the degree of bachelor of medicine, before the Reverend Joseph Willard, S.T.D. president, the medical professors, and the governors of the University at Cambridge, in America / by Peter de Sales la Terriere, from Canada. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    Of the two leading theories that have been advocated bf phyficians, the one makes it an inflammatory, the other a putrid affection. Probably, in mod cafes, it is primarily inflammatory, and finally putrid ; but may it not eafily be conceived, that a puerperal fever which, in a plethoric habit, where the veflels being turgid are lefs difpofed to abforption, would in it's origin be highly inflammatory, might in a thinner habit, where the irritability is great, affume from the very beginning, a putrid type ? I have been informed of an fnftance, in this Common- wealth, of iwo ingenious practitioners of eminence widely differing in fentiment on this difeafe, tenacioufly fuport- ing their opinions upon fact and experience, and yet fup- porting them in direct oppofition to each other. Might not both of them be in the right, and even the method of cure adopted by each of them be perfectly juftifiable, though the one recommended an ancifeptic, and the other an antiphlogiflic courfe ? They both practifed according to the obvious fyraptoms of the malady ; the one, under appearances actually putrid, prefcribed antifeptics ; the other, under thofe that were inflammatory, prefcribed antiphlogiftics. The many caufes of abforption indeed fliould render us cautious of phlebotomy ; but I conceive, it may fometimes be indicated. It may, perhaps, be objected to what I have advanced, that if my theory is right, there is nothing fpecific in the puerperal fever.— To this I anfwsr—That from the irritable flate of the C uterus