Corpulence, or, Excess of fat during pregnancy : a letter to Dr. Lee / by Thomas King Chambers.

  • Chambers, Thomas King, 1818-1889.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Corpulence, or, Excess of fat during pregnancy : a letter to Dr. Lee / by Thomas King Chambers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    during the drain upon it necesssary to the nourishment of the infant, it is below the ordi- nary standard. But in some persons prone to corpulence, either from an hereditary or acquired constitu- tion, the contrary event happens; and as the child grows in the womb, the skin of the mother becomes more and more succulent and elastic, the limbs rounder and fuller, and the fat in the abdomen is added to at the same time as it is pressed upwards by the increased bulk of the viscera below. Hence arises a more than ordinary sense of suffocation, diffi- culty in moving about, and much general dis- tress,—yet the aspect is healthy, and the patient is often congratulated by her acquaintance on the possession of a robust and good constitu- tion. These congratulations are misplaced ; for besides the discomfort, the danger of mis-car- riage is, I think, much increased by excessive corpulence. In the table which I published in my book on Corpulence, containing the cases of thirty-eight obese persons, it is remarked that several of the females had suffered this misfortune, amounting in one case to ten occa- sions ; and it is singular how few children those had borne who were disposed to obesity in early life. There are nine cases of married