The therapeutics of gynecology and obstetrics : comprising the medical, dietetic, and hygienic treatment of diseases of women.

  • Atkinson, William B. (William Biddle), 1832-1909.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The therapeutics of gynecology and obstetrics : comprising the medical, dietetic, and hygienic treatment of diseases of women. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    the ovaries take part in this increased activity. Mr. Tait does not share the prejudice against this instrument which some writers have manifested. CHARLES R. DRYSDALE, M. D., OF LONDON. This author maintains {Obstetrical Journal of Great Britain, Oct., 1875,) that there is too great a tendency to expect to find an evi- dent physical cause for all painful menstruation. Spasm and neu- ralgia are quite sufficient to account for the vast majority of cases. Membranous shreds, also, are frequent causes of obstruction to the monthly flow. The rational treatment of dysmenorrhea commen- cing at an early period, consists not in the use of pessaries, or of incision of the uterus; but in the use of cold baths in the morning, with short walks in the open air afterwards; in hot baths, a few days previously to the menstrual periods; and in palliative treat- ment of the paroxysms by means of antispasmodics at the epoch of pain. Marriage sometimes cures such cases at once; at other times, it is of no use. PROF. J. MATTHEWS DUNCAN, M. D., OF EDINBURGH. This teacher strongly advocates the treatment of dysmenorrhea by mechanical means. He would not hesitate to employ it in vir- gins when the severity of the case was urgent. The treatment he refers to is that by bougies introduced into the cavity of the womb through the cervix. He states that it is unaccompanied by danger. The only evil result he has ever seen from it is a tem- porary perimetritis. It is a treatment the innocence of which arises from the fact that there is no cutting, and that the instru- ment is not left in the womb above a few minutes at a time. It is allowed to remain till the pangs of pain which it brings on have passed. In order to effect a cure you must go up considerably above a No. 9. You must go up so as to stretch and distend the internal os uteri; and this stretching or distention of the internal os may require you, in different cases, to reach different sizes. A No. 11 is quite sufficient in many cases ; in others you will go up to a 12 or 13, rarely above that. These various numbers are not all used in one day, but in successive days, or every second or third day, and generally the whole is effected in a few sittings— say from four to eight. You are not to expect that this treatment will cure every case. By this treatment he says that most of the