A practical treatise on inflammation of the uterus, its cervix, & appendages, and on its connexion with uterine disease / by James Henry Bennet.

  • Bennet, James Henry, 1816-1891.
Date:
1853
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on inflammation of the uterus, its cervix, & appendages, and on its connexion with uterine disease / by James Henry Bennet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    portance to the action of these medicines in the treatment of chronic inflammation and enlargement of the uterus is not to be depended upon. Most of the patients labouring under chronic metritis whom I meet with have been suffering from uterine disease for many years; and the general health has, in consequence, long been completely broken down. With such patients I do not feel authorized, as I have elsewhere stated, to give such medicines as iodine or mercury, unless the necessity be absolute and impera- tive j the more so, as they must necessarily be administered for a lengthened period if they are destined to act on the nutrition of a chronically inflamed organ, and mercury and iodine, when taken so as thoroughly to saturate the system, produce of them- selves a species of cachexia. Persons already reduced to a state •of extreme debility and emaciation by chronic disease, are cer- tainly not those in whom it is desirable to give medicines, which can only add to the evil. Entertaining these views with regard to the administration of mercury and iodine, in whatever mode or form they may be given, and never resorting to them until all ordinary means, both local and general, have failed, I have thus ascertained that they are seldom necessary, the chronic inflammation generally giving way without their assistance. On the other hand, in the few obstinate cases in which I am obliged to resort to their use, I do not find the effect they produce by any means so beneficial as is generally asserted. I am therefore, I consider, warranted in concluding that if they succeed oftener in the hands of other practitioners, it is because they are generally used from the first, in the early stage of treatment, in conjunction with other means, which alone would probably suffice to remove the disease. When all ordinary therapeutic agents, including the internal administration of mercury and iodine, fail to remove the chronic inflammation and induration of the uterus, I have often esta- blished, as a counter-irritant, an artificial ulceration or issue on the neck of the uterus itself, with potassa fusa or potassa cum calce, independently of any disease of that region, and with very great benefit to the patient. The first case in which I resorted to this rather severe mode