Medical essays : compiled from reports to the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery / by medical officers of the U.S. Navy.

  • United States. Navy Department. Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical essays : compiled from reports to the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery / by medical officers of the U.S. Navy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    The barrenness of the women is recognized as another cause which tends to reduce the population, by checking the natural increase. Abortion is also mentioned; indeed, barrenness and abortion are said to go hand in hand; the one producing the other in many instances, when the former is not the result of nat- ural defects. It is asserted, even by medical men, that the native doctresses, who keep their remedies a secret, are in the habit of giving a drug which produces not only abortion but barrenness. Whether this be true or not I am unable to say, but it is generally believed. It is said that women resort to it from motives of spite or jealousy toward their husbands. Another method is by me- chanical means; the subject of it lying flat upon the back while the doctress kneads the abdomen with her hands or treads it with her feet, having first 'thoroughly rubbed it with oil. The venereal disease is very common through all the Pacific Islands, though not as much so in Fiji as in others. In the Ha- waiian, Society, Marshall, Gilbert, and Caroline Islands it is very common. It is so intimately mixed with leprosy and ichthyosis that it is sometimes difficult at first sight to determine which is the disease presented. Indeed, there are those who regard the leprosy as an aggravated form of syphilis; and I heard of one man in Honolulu who offered to take any of the government patients, called lepers, and cure them on the principles of treat- ment as applied to syphilis. Whether any such were put in his hands or not I am unable to say, but presume they were not, for the minister of the interior, who has general supervision of all hospitals, is a physician of good abilities, and the staff surgeon of the king has immediate charge of the leper-hospitals. So wide-spread was the syphilitic disease supposed to be in the Pacific Islands, and our men had such ready access to it, that I expected to have a great deal of it under treatment. In this I was disappointed. The journal of the Jamestown shows compar- atively few cases. I was informed by the American consul at Tahiti that the na- tive doctors are very successful in the treatment of syphilis, and