Elements of operative midwifery ; comprising a description of certain new and improved powers for assisting difficult and dangerous labours; illustrated by plates: with cautionary strictures on the improper use of instruments / By David D. Davis.

  • Davis, David D., 1777-1841.
Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elements of operative midwifery ; comprising a description of certain new and improved powers for assisting difficult and dangerous labours; illustrated by plates: with cautionary strictures on the improper use of instruments / By David D. Davis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    94/444 (page 76)
    wifery. Amongst other powers of presumed efficacy in quickening the pains of parturition, it cannot excite surprise that the materia medica should open its vast resources, and furnish at once a large and plausible accession to the general stock. Out of a catalogue, however, of great length, which might be extracted from the works of nostrum-mongers of the last and some preceding centuries upon this subject, there are but two principal articles which would ap- pear to have credit with authors or practitioners of recent date, for the possession of any actual power as excitants or promoters of the parturient function. These are the borate of soda, and the ergot of rye: of which, indeed, the former was much recom- mended by the ancients as a specific for invigorating uterine action. After falling into a state of desuetude which promised an additional repose to it of many centuries to come, its dormant reputation was roused about twenty years ago, by the busy and versatile genius of Hufeland, in his Journal der Practischen Arzneykunde und Wundarzneykunst. See Hufeland's Journal, Vol. xxi. p. 69, and VoJ. xxiv. p. 91. Professor Lobstein some years afterwards addressed a communication to the Societe Me- dicale d’Emulation of Paris on the same subject; in which he warmly espoused the same doctrine; and detailed six cases in illustration of the effects of repeated doses of borax on protracted labours. The quantity of borax recommended in M. Lobsteiffs paper was five or six grains every half hour. It seems remark- able, that in an Essay written by the same gentleman, in the course of only a few months after the date of his paper on the borate of soda, he should come forward as an ardent recommender of mechanical irritation, as a means of rousing an indolent uterus into parturient activity. For analyses of both papers, with copious extracts from them, see Leroux’s Journal de Medecine, Yrol. xxxvi. p. 1S6, and again the same volume, p. 141. I some years ago