Obstetrics: the science and the art.

  • Meigs, Charles D. (Charles Delucena), 1792-1869.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Obstetrics: the science and the art. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    attack of the disease. ^ * * When I took away only ten or twelve ounces of blood from my patient, she always died; but when I had courage to take away twenty or twenty-four ounces at one bleeding, in the beginning of the disease, the patient never failed to recover. ^ *''^ If, therefore, a practitioner is called to a patient in the beginning of puerperal fever^ he must never take away less than twenty or twenty-four ounces of blood at one bleeding; otherwise he will fail in curing the disease. I know that this will be thought too large a quantity, by those who never take away more than eight or ten ounces of blood from their patients ; but such prac- titioners would never cure puerperal fever; for, unless a practitioner venture to take away the quantity mentioned, it would be much more prudent in him not to bleed at all, because his patient will certainly die, and the bleeding will be blamed. * * * And I felt this prejudice in its full force, when I had not courage to take away more than ten or twelve, or four- teen, or even sixteen ounces, of blood from my patients. But when I had resolution to take twenty or twenty-four ounces at one bleeding, I disregarded it, because I was sure that that quantity, taken away within six or eight hours after the attack, would certainly cure the disease, and that of course there would be no clamor against the bleeding. But, when I was not called at the beginning or soon after the attack, I did not bleed at all. ^ ''^' '- Now, when I was called early to patients in the puer23eral fever, and had courage to take away twenty-four ounces at one bleeding, I never failed at once to cure the disease. * * * After much experience in this disease, and mature deliberation concerning the conduct most proper to be pursued in my peculiar situation, I came to the following resolution: If called to a case within twelve hours after the attack, I insisted on bleeding the patient, and promised for its success: but if at a later period, or from twelve to twenty-four hours after the attack, in that case, like Sydenham with the same remedy in the smallpox, I thought it incumbent on me to propose it as the only effectual remedy, but I neither insisted on it nor promised for its success. 856. Many valuable publications upon childbed fever have ap- peared since the date of Gordon's work. It is not very long since I procured to be published, through the approbation of Dr. John Bell, now Professor of the Practice of Physic at Cincinnati, a volume containing, first, a short article on puerperal fever, by my- self, designed as an introduction to the rest of the volume, which consists of the works of Gordon, Hey, of Leeds, Armstrong, of Sunderland, and Eobert Lee, of London, on puerperal fever. I have