A system of midwifery : including the diseases of pregnancy and the puerperal state / by William Leishman.

Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A system of midwifery : including the diseases of pregnancy and the puerperal state / by William Leishman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    so that it is almost impossible to combat the symptoms by what we might judge to be appropriate diet. When the anorexia is less marked, the digestive functions may be disturbed,—gastric and intestinal dis- orders being of frequent occurrence, taking the form, it may be, either of vomiting with heart-burn and pyrosis, or of obstinate diarrhoea with flatulent distension and tenesmus. In those cases, ordinary remedies may prove of little avail, and after a few weeks of struggle it will be- come evident that no alternative remains except to wean the child, and take such other measures as may permanently arrest the secretion. This affection is believed to be particularly dangerous to those who have any phthisical tendency. From what has been said, it will be sufficiently obvious that the Management of Lactation must not unfrequently be a prominent part of the duties of the accoucheur. Nothing, in this respect, is more important than that the diet of a nursing woman should be, in quan- tity and in quality, such as is most likely to conduce to the health of the child, as well as to her own. In the case of a perfectly healthy woman, but little attention to regimen is required,—nothing further being necessary, in such instances, than that the woman should avoid any imprudence in diet, while in other respects she need make no change in her ordinary habits. The pregnant state, however, and the subsequent exhaustion which attends the process of parturition, very generally leave the woman in a condition which manifestly requires generous treatment, in order that the health may be re-established, while provision is made for the special drain on the system which the function of lactation involves. Among the higher classes, where luxuri- ous habits tend to the diminution of constitutional vigour, and among the inhabitants of towns, the necessity for such treatment is much more prominently marked than in country districts, where a life of physical exertion, spent, to a great extent, in the open air, implies hygienic conditions which are the very opposite of those which we observe in the other case. In ordinary practice, however, the necessity for a liberal dietary is so universally recognised that there is a danger of falling into a routine practice in this respect, the result of which will, undoubtedly, in some cases, be the reverse of beneficial. As the result of some experience and close observation, we are con- vinced that indiscriminate over-feeding and stimulation of nursing women is a more frequent cause of the disorders of early infancy than is usually supposed. Nurses and mothers can readily understand how a thin and watery milk should fail to nourish the child, but it is by no means so easy to convince them that a specimen rich in nutri- tious elements may possibly be, from its very richness, the cause why