An account of some of the most important diseases peculiar to women.

  • Gooch, Robert, 1784-1830. [from old catalog].
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An account of some of the most important diseases peculiar to women. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Lamar Soutter Library, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

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    was not red. The interstices between the viscera were filled with masses of lymph, which formed a cast of their shape. Of the patients attacked with this disease, more than two-thirds died : bleeding was injurious ; leeches to the abdomen were useless; emetics were hurtful; bark and cordials, though indicated by debility, M^ere inefficacious. Dr. Clarke suspected that the disease might be occasioned by the purge ivhich is always given to lying-in women on the second day after delivery; but glysters were not more successful. Now compare the accounts which Dr. Butter and Dr. Clarke have given of the results of their practice. The former seems to have lost none of his patients, and found a daily dose of rhubarb and cordial con- fection a never-failing remedy ; the other lost more than two-thirds of his patients, and nothing seems to have done any good. What can explain this con- trariety of statement ? A perusal of their pamphlets at once solves the mystery; they are talking about two different diseases. That described by Dr. Clarke was a genuine puerperal fever, accompanied by an affection of peritoneum, which occasioned the effu- sion of lymph and serum ; that described by Dr. Butter is quite different. Its ordinary duration was from ten days to five or six weeks. Whoever is familiar with the tremendous disease which I am considering, and knows that the patient is either dead or safe at the end of a week at longest, will instantly perceive that a disease so protracted cannot be the same; and a perusal of Dr. Butter's cases leaves no doubt on the subject. It was a slow
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