Outlines of the principal diseases of females : Chiefly for the use of students / By Fleetwood Churchill.

  • Churchill, Fleetwood, 1808-1878.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Outlines of the principal diseases of females : Chiefly for the use of students / By Fleetwood Churchill. 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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    child induces an attempt to relieve it by rubbing the part, which of course aggravates the suffering, and increases the inflammation. At a more advanced stage, there is observed a colourless thin mucous discharge, speedily becoming more copious, thicker, and of a white or yellow colour. It is very often of an acrid character, and gives rise to a ring1 of inflammation and sometimes of excoriation of the skin at the margin of the vulva. If the labia be separated, the mucous membrane will be found more vascular and of a deeper colour than usual; but in a very few cases does the inflammation extend up the vagina. The distress is increased with the progress of the disease—the smarting and scalding are very severe, and the little patient cannot walk without pain. It is very rare to find any constitutional disturbance, unless where this attack is but the local development of a general catarrh. Under ordinary circumstances, the disorder is neither very tedious nor very obstinate, and, after running a certain course, it terminates in resolution. The cases mentioned by Boivin and Duges,] as occurring during a general catarrh of the mucous membranes, sometimes presented the appearance of erythema, erysipelas, or aphtha?, and sometimes of superficial ulceration. In the epidemic which occurred in the Hopital des Enfans malades, Duges observes,2 there were two kinds,—one attacked the weak, cachectic and exhausted, and fol- lowed after encrusted particles, or rather superficial gangrene of the skin:—the other affected the robust and stout, accompanied with swelling, redness, pain and fever, and beginning directly by an ulcerous point. Both presented a yellowish grey aspect, the edges abrupt like those of chancres; they occupied, however, the exterior rather than the interior of the pudenda; they increased in the same way as phagedenic ulcers or wounds affected with hospital gangrene, of which they presented all the characters; the fever increased with their surface, and emaciation and death fre- quently ensued in the first form. In the second, real gangrene sometimes took place, though most frequently the inflammation subsided easily, and was entirely cured by cleanliness, emollient lotions, moderate diet, and change of air. Mr. Kinder Wood has given a very graphic description of the cases he observed in 1815.3 The patients were from one to six years of age. Of twelve who were attacked, only two recovered. The inflammation of the labia was preceded by rigors, pain in the head, dulness. nausea, loss of appetite, thirst, &c. The distress of the patient on passing urine first atracted attention, and, on exami- nation, the labia were found inflamed, swollen, and of a dark colour. Very soon the parts within the vulva became affected, and, from the thin discharge, Mr. Wood thinks it probable that the lower portion 1 Fleming's Trans, p. 651. 2 Am. Duges Essai physiologico-pathologique sur la fievre, &c. vol. ii. p. 95 & 132—Boivin and Duges. p. 551. 3 History of a very fatal affection of the Pudendum of Female Children,