Lectures on obstetric operations : including the treatment of hæmorrhage and forming a guide to the management of difficult labour / by Robert Barnes.

  • Barnes, Robert, 1817-1907.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on obstetric operations : including the treatment of hæmorrhage and forming a guide to the management of difficult labour / by Robert Barnes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    anxious study and reflection. I now find that these views have received confirmation from so many prac- titioners of repute, who have put them in practice, that I feel no hesitation in presenting them as con- taining the true principles of dealing with one of the most formidable of all the dangers attending pregnancy and labour. I have next sought to place upon its true physiolo- gical basis the treatment of the terrible haemorrhages which occur after the birth of the child. All the ordinary methods of arresting uterine haemorrhage depend for their efficacy upon their power of direct- ing nerve-force to the uterus to cause its contraction. But, when the woman has sunk so low that nerve-force enough for this purpose does not remain, the art of the physician is exhausted; unless, indeed, he can find in the system another power through which other reme- dies may act. This other power exists in the coagu- lability of the blood ; and there are styptics which will plug the vessels left open by the paralyzed muscular walls. The timely use of all the means we possess for arresting haemorrhage will almost always keep the loss within limits compatible with recovery ; and in those exceptional cases where haemostatic means have failed, we may still hope to save by the restorative operation of transfusion. Feeling strongly that there is some- thing defective in our art, or in ourselves, if a woman is suffered to bleed to death, I have spent much care upon the exposition of the condition upon which arrest of haemorrhage depends, and I have insisted upon the necessity of improving and extending the operation of transfusion. In seeking illustrations, I have drawn almost exclu- sively from my own experience and reflection. In so doing I may have failed somewhat in artistic nicety,