Lectures on midwifery and the forms of disease peculiar to women and children : delivered to the members of the Botanico-Medical College of Ohio / by A. Curtis.

  • Alva Curtis
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on midwifery and the forms of disease peculiar to women and children : delivered to the members of the Botanico-Medical College of Ohio / by A. Curtis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    10/270 page 6
    the subject of which it treats, that is worthy to be made the ground of implicit confidence in practice. I have endeavored to render this volume such that, if a Thorn- sonian should, through inexperience, fear, in a difficult case, to apply his favorite practice, a reference to its pages would show him that the fundamental principles and most common and impor- tant modes of application, are advocated and sustained by many of the most learned and judicious auLhorsof the old school ; while these same gentlemen have given to the depletive, antiphlogcstic, rash, and instrumental system, the credit of almost all the mis- chiefs that have ever happened in the chamber of parturition. Take the following for example. : Midwifery is the art of assisting women in childbirth.— Webster. The proceedings of nature in ripening her fruits, in bursting the husks of walnuts and almonds and opening the shells of eggs without force, when ripe, should teach midwives patience, and per- suade them to let nature alone to perform her own work, and not to disquiet women by their smugglings; for such enforcements rather hinder the birth than in any way promote it. They often ruin the mother and usually the child. Let midwives know that they arc natures servants.**—Willoughby, Ed. Pr. vol. 5. p. b. Let every candid practitioner acknowledge that, for one instance where the retention of the placenta has been attended with dan- gerous consequences, its precipitate extraction has been fatal to hundreds.—Ed. Pr. v< 5. p. 127 The rash and preposterous application of instruments [where the head is squeezed into the pelvis in such a manner as to induce the belief that it cannot be extricated without them] has proved the bane of thousands.*'^-/6. p. 140. 4i The work of nature is too often spoiled by officious hands.— lb. p. 142. vVhen I reflected on the great responsibility of giving directions which, if wrong, might prove destructive to the li^csof my fellow beings, my heart shrunk from the undertaking. But, recollecting to have seen saved by this practice, many lives which had been pronounced hopeless by the advocates of the other, I felt it an im- perative duty to proceed, especially as I knew that many true Thomsonians had placed more confidence in the experience of the old school practitioners, than in their own ability and skill to ap- ply the practice laid down in the New Guide, who, could they see the many dangers mingW with.the few advantages of this course* which even my limited knowledge and experience might present to them, would prefer a plan of saving thousands of lives that are now regularly sent from the child-bed scene, to the place from which no traveler returns; and much suffering to other thousands
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3