Woman, her diseases and remedies : a series of letters to his class / by Charles D. Meigs.

  • Meigs, Charles D. (Charles Delucena), 1792-1869.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Woman, her diseases and remedies : a series of letters to his class / by Charles D. Meigs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    or two of habituation; and the vagina can be extended, carrying the uterus before it to any desirable length. Patients who have employed it, have been relieved of uterine deviations that would not yield to the globe, the discus, or any other treatment. The greatest objection to this instrument is its costliness; for Mr. John Eorer, of North Sixth Street, who prepared several at my request, informed me they can- not be sold at a price under fifteen dollars each. There is another pessary in use here, fashioned somewhat like a horseshoe, either furnished with the corks, that is, by bending the heel of the shoe, or without the corks; I have never used this instrument, nor shall I employ it, since I cannot deem it safe to allow the points of the horseshoe to be the points of resistance to the whole tenesmic or bearing-down power. Such a point of pressure is too small. Indenta- tion is followed by absorption; upon the same principle as that which causes what is called the bed sore; and ulceration of the compressed points gives insufferable pain. You ought not to adjust a pessary beneath a womb in which the os uteri is inflamed, or ulcerated. Cure the inflammation first, and then adjust the pessary. You ought to forbid all pregnant women to use the pessary; every pessary, in such persons would act as a colpeurynter, and a colpeu- rysis would tend to open the os uteri and let the embryo or the foetus come forth. Having now said all that it is obvious for me to say, in this letter, on the subject of simple prolapsus, and the use of pessaries, and their kinds, I shall proceed now to recapitulate my views on the disorder— 1. Prolapsus uteri is a disease of the vagina, not of the womb. 2. To cure prolapsus uteri, you are to seek to cure the vagina, and when you have done that, the womb will be found cured also. 3. The pessary is a suspensory, which in the cure of prolapsus is as necessary as a suspensory is for an orchitis. 4. I prefer, as a general proposition, the globe, to all other forms, and Dr. Physick's globe pessary to any other for the treatment of sim- ple prolapsus. 5. If you apply the pessary in cases not suitable, you will do mis- chief. There ought to be no inflammation or ulceration either of the vagina or the womb. C. D. M.