The change of life in health and disease : a practical treatise on the nervous and other affections incidental to women at the decline of life / by Edward John Tilt.

Tilt, Edward John, 1815-1893.

Date:: 1871

Credit: The change of life in health and disease : a practical treatise on the nervous and other affections incidental to women at the decline of life / by Edward John Tilt. 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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$womb was small, with a virgin orifice. That the patient was not pregnant I felt convinced, and I inferred the change of life from the long continuance of menstrual irregularities, the continued epigastric faintness, the flushes and sweats. My usual treatment relieved the patient; for many successive months she had an abundant vaginal mucous discharge, which was not interfered with. When I last saw the patient she was fifty, and there had been no return of the menstrual flow. Case 7.— Cessation supposed to be pregnancy Sarah B., a tall, thin woman, of a sanguine temperament, says she is thirty-five, but looks forty, applied at the Farringdon Dis- pensary for a lying-in-letter, on May T, 1851. The flow first appeared at fourteen, was unattended by pain. She married at eighteen, has had five children, but has never been well since her last confinement two years ago. Hypogastric pains were habitual, the menstrual flow irregular, for the last six times it had the appearance of dirty water, and ceased entirely seven months back, when the abdomen enlarged, and she now feels a fluttering similar to what she felt when pregnant. The breasts are swollen and discharge moisture, and the nipples are surrounded by a dark circle interspersed with a few pseudo- follicles. Notwithstanding these signs of pregnancy, and the patient's assertions, I did not think her pregnant; for there was no solid umbilical tumor, no softening of the neck of the womb; and the irregularities of the menstrual flow, and the appearance it last assumed, coupled with a great liability to flushes and perspirations for the last three months, were my reasons for thinking the change of life had occurred, and I as- certained that I was right upon inquiry several years aftei\ I have notes of three similar cases. In the preceding cases, I believe that connection taking- place during the change of life, induced a nervous condition of the ovaries and womb, capable of determining most of the symptoms of pregnancy; and when the abdominal swelling, the nausea, the enlarged breasts persist for months, the sup- position of pregnancy might be easily admitted, and the right- ful heir to an estate might be defrauded without the possibility of detection, if the woman had already borne children, unless$