Puerperal convulsions / by C. A. Lindsley ; read before the New Haven County Medical Society, April, 1858.

  • Lindsley, Charles A. (Charles Augustus), 1826-1906.
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Puerperal convulsions / by C. A. Lindsley ; read before the New Haven County Medical Society, April, 1858. 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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    / PUERPERAL CONVULSIONS. Dissertation read before the New Haven County Medical Society, April 8th, 1858. BY C. A. LINDSLEY, M. D., OF NEW IIAVEN. Mr. President and Gentlemen :—Perhaps our profession are not called to contend with any other disease, so formidable in its character, respecting which the best authors agree so exactly in the treatment. With scarcely a dissenting voice the grand chief remedy is venesection,—copious depletion, almost without reservation. Dr. P. Churchill says : The first thing to be done is to take away blood from the arm or temporal artery largely ; if the paroxysms continue, this may be repeated. Dr. Copland, in his Dictionary of Medicine, in the article on Puer- peral Convulsions, observes : Depletion may be carried further in those states of the disease which assume the character of eclampsia, or which are attended by great fullness about the head, or stertorous breathing, than in almost any other malady. Dr. Cazeaux remarks: At the head of the list of curative means we must place sanguineous emissions, which have been resorted to under every form. To these, therefore, we must first have recourse. In like manner, Dr. Rigby, Dr. Eamsbotham, Dr. Meigs,—in fact almost every authority,—recommend free depletion. The inference naturally drawn from this fact would be that the etiology and pathology must be as well understood, and the lesions of the disease as uniform, as the treatment recommended. An inference, however, that would be far, very far from the truth. Indeed, the utmost confusion prevails among these same authors concerning everything else beside the treatment. To illustrate, I give some quotations in reference to the causes, from several contemporary y^rjters who will be recognized as authority 1 Cent .I * WW r<1