Volume 1

General therapeutics and materia medica adapted for a medical text-book with indexes of remedies and of diseases and their remedies / by Robley Dunglison.

  • Dunglison, Robley, 1798-1869.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: General therapeutics and materia medica adapted for a medical text-book with indexes of remedies and of diseases and their remedies / by Robley Dunglison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    she becomes nubile, or before the genital apparatus has experienced the evolution that befalls it at puberty. After this, all the func- tions are apt to be modified by the new condition of the uterine organs. A periodical discharge is established, and if this be in any manner interfered with, the organic irritation, which ought to have existed in the ovaries and uterus, is transferred to other parts, and the one most predisposed to take on morbid action assumes it. Hence it is, that attention has always to be paid to the state of this function, when the therapeutist is called upon to examine diseases of other parts, that may be obscurely connected with the uterine functions, through the extensive sympathy which they maintain. This is signally shown when the catamenia do not appear at the usual age; or when, after having occurred regularly, they become obstructed. Whilst, too, they are flowing, the female is generally extremely impressible, so that active remedies—especially such as afiect the lower part of the bowels, or the urinary organs, and excite the uterus through contiguous sympathy—have to be used with caution. The period at which the catamenia cease is also one of interest to the therapeutist. The female is then so proverbially liable to irregularity in the functions, and in the nutrition of organs, that it has been called—even by the unprofessional—“the critical ^oeriod.” Prior to their total disappearance, the catamenia may recur irregu- larly; and chronic irritations be thus developed in the sexual organs, or elsewhere. The mammae, having lost the sympathetic influence exerted between them and the uterus, are apt to assume a morbid condition, and to become the seat of irritations of a specific kind— as of cancer—which appeared to be previously held in check by the play of the healthy sympathies. Yet, although the female is more liable to disease at this time, it would not seem from the results of statistical inquiry that the absolute mortality is increased. It is obvious, then, that the state of the uterine function must be an important object of inquiry in many of the diseases to which the sex is liable ; that when the catamenia are present, the flow must not be officiously interfered with ; and if modified, either owing to the proper periodical irritation having been arrested, or to the flow occurring in too great quantity, appropriate measures for altering these conditions must be had recourse to. ^ At one time, it was universally presumed, that hysteria is occa- sioned altogether by the state of the uterus, and hence its name. Irom vtrrspa, “ the uterus,” and the German name—Mutterkrank- heit or “womb disease.” It occurs,however, in man; is essentially a disease of the nervous system, and probably prevails more in females only because they possess greater mobility, and irritability of the nervous system,—doubtless often developed by the particular condition of the uterus reacting on the nervous system, but appear- —as in the male—where no such influence can exist. The presence of the uterine system constitutes, therefore, a main difterence in the indications to be laid down for the treatment of female diseases, as well as the mode of fulfilling those indications ; VOT,. I. 4