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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    about obtaining such a degree of development as may consist with the power of germ-production. It is not unworthy of your observa- tion, that when the power of germ-production is lost at the change of life, that of producing the pudendal hair is diminished very sensibly, and in old age, not unfrequently to the extent of a complete depilation. Women, also, who from feebler health cease to bear children, as they advance in age, but who have not wholly lost the faculty of germ-production, often find that the pudendal hairs are lessened in abundance during the suspension of the childbearing faculty; and that the quantity is greatly increased as soon as they find themselves again pregnant after many years have passed since any former gesta- tion of theirs. This I have learned from several cases observed and inquired of in my clinical experience, for I have many times had charge of labors in women, who being, as it is called, getting old, and not bearing children for eight, ten, or twelve years, were yet after- wards surprised and vexed to find themselves so wonderfully young again. As to the disorders to which the structure called the mons veneris is liable, you will be sensible that they must be of the nature of the specific, the follicular, and the phlegmonous inflammations, or con- tusions and wounds; and that such affections have not and cannot have any special relation to what is properly called midwifery. Per- haps, indeed, we may except some rare samples of pain, neuralgia or inflammation of these textures connected with strains, or violence done to the symphysis pubis, either by the protracted influence of continued pressure and weight on the pubes by a heavy womb; or by injurious tension and even disruption of the symphysis or of the bone during the transit of an overgrown foetus, or in a badly managed for- ceps operation. Where great violence is unhappily done to the bony structures either by the power of the womb, in its expulsive efforts, forcing too large a child through too small a pelvis; or where, by the additional power of the forceps, such a child is drawn through such a pelvis, the articulation of the pubis, which lies underneath the mons veneris, becomes so strained as to inflame after the labor is over: or the bone itself may be even broken asunder, as in some instances related by Madame Lachapelle in her admirable Treatise on Mid- wifery. In any such cases, where pain is felt in the lower part of the mons, as I have heard many persons complain, it appears obvious that the same chirurgical treatment ought to be adopted as is known to be most suitable to the articular maladies in general. Professor Mutter has doubtless taught you that in the treatment of articular inflamma-