Report of the committee on obstetrics of the American Medical Association : read May 1851 / by D. Humphreys Storer.

  • Storer, David Humphreys, 1804-1891.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the committee on obstetrics of the American Medical Association : read May 1851 / by D. Humphreys Storer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    as usual, experiencing no other inconvenience than a constant drain- ing, from the vagina, of a small quantity of fluid slightly tinged with blood and tainted with tar, and a sense of weight, as if, to use her own expression, the child had settled down.'' Nothing unusual occurred until Friday evening, the 7th, when she was suddenly taken with a chill and rigor, which lasted nearly two hours, accompanied with severe headache. It was succeeded by slight fever. She, however, rested tolerably well during the night, having bathed her feet and taken an active cathartic. Labour commenced on Saturday at 11 A. M. At 2 o'clock, the membranes ruptured, and a large quantity of liquor amnii was dis- charged, with almost entire relief from pain, and patient con- tinued comparatively quiet until 8 o'clock Sunday morning, when the pains returned; but it was not till noon that dilatation could be said to have fairly commenced. At 5 P. M. they became severe, and continued to increase until half-past 2 A.M. (113 hours from the time the tar-water was injected), when she was delivered of a plump and vigorous child, loudly vociferating its own advent. It weighed nearly four pounds. The placenta soon followed. The secretion of milk was established in the usual time, and the child required no lessons of instruction to draw it, taking the breast as promptly and as eagerly as if it bad been a nine instead of a seven months' production. The mother recovered without any unpleasant symptoms whatsoever. The almost necessary ' soreness and stiff- ness' after so much exertion, soon passed off, and, in ten days, she was up and about the room, and in a fortnight dismissed her nurse, assumed the discharge of her domestic affairs, and has the satisfac- tion, to use her own expression, ' of nursing her own infant, with as fine a prospect of raising it as any other mother enjoys.' The reasons which induced Dr. Blatchford to prefer the course which he so successfully pursued are thus concisely stated by him: The ergot might endanger the life of the child, about one-half being still-born after its employment. To puncturing the mem- branes, and letting off the waters either suddenly, or little by little, necessarily subjecting the child to great pressure at a period when the tenacity of life is very feeble, there was the same objection. The contracted capacity of the vagina would not, in this case, permit the ' introduction of the hand sufficiently far to detach the mem- branes with the finger,' without causing excessive pain, or even the introduction into the os uteri of the sponge of Kluge. An attempt to detach the membranes, for an inch or two within the os, by means