Abstract of a registry kept for some years in the Lying-In Hospital of Dublin / by Joseph Clarke.

  • Clarke, Joseph, 1758-1834.
Date:
[1817]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Abstract of a registry kept for some years in the Lying-In Hospital of Dublin / by Joseph Clarke. 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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    the course of their lives. Every man's recollec- tion must enable him to say whether such events , have occurred to bim in greater or less proportion. On the subject of after pains, truth obliges me to acknowledge, there are some constitutions who suffer much from ihem in spite of the strictest ob- servance of every measure hitherto proposed for their prevention. Women of an irritable fibre, more especially if subject to painful menstruation, appear to sutFer most. A very brisk purgative given a few hours after delivery, has afforded relief to a few of my patients where repeated opiates, joined to the warmest aromatics, have failed to produce the Hesired efi'ect. Labours are rendered tedious either by causes weakening the expelling powers of the mother, or increasing resistance to the passage of the foetus. Since it became usual to keep women in labour in a cool atmosphere, to prevent them making volun- tary exertions during the dilatation of the os tincce* and to support them by mild instead of stimulating nourishment and medicines, the powers of the constitution fail but seldom in expelling the foetus, where there is no material defect in the formation of the pelvis. I mean where the defect from pubes to sacrum does not exceed half or three quarters of an inch. The practice of modern hospitals has sufficiently evinced the truth of this assertion.— It is certain that a labour really tedious, under the best management, is not without langer both to