Report of the Committee on Obstetrics of the American Medical Association / by D. Humphreys Storer.

  • American Medical Association. Committee on Obstetrics.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Committee on Obstetrics of the American Medical Association / by D. Humphreys Storer. 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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    of a catheter, seemed almost of a necessity to endanger the integrity of the membranes ; and ' abdominal frictions and manipulations, and the warm bath, seemed to be remedies entirely too domestic, un- scientific, and uncertain.' In connection with this subject, we cannot pass by, unnoticed, the proposition of M. Depaul to prevent the necessity of inducing pre- mature delivery by diminishing the size of the child, by subjecting the mother to occasional venesections and a very spare regimen; nor that of M. Delfrasse to arrest the development of the infant by administering iodine in minute doses to the mother during the latter months of her pregnancy. The former gentleman communicates two cases in which his pro- posed treatment was pursued with favourable results. In the first instance, a lady with a pelvis contracted by rickets, was relieved of a full grown still-child, by means of ergot. Three years afterwards, she was delivered of a large still-child by the forceps. She became pregnant the following year in November, and in February was put upon a diet of vegetables, a small quantity of meat once a week, and half a pound of bread a-day. She was bled from the arm in the third, sixth, eighth, and eighth and a half months. Her labour was completed in August. The child weighed five pounds, and lived. The two previous children had each weighed nine pounds. The mother recovered rapidly. The second patient had a contracted pelvis, and in a previous labour Dubois had perforated the child's head. In a succeeding labour, M. Depaul delivered her, as he supposed at the eighth month, of a small living child, with the forceps. It was, however, afterwards ascertained that the woman had gone her full time, but having failed to procure an abortion after she had used various means to accomplish it, she commenced pursuing the most rigid diet, almost approaching to starvation. At first, she suffered much from pain in the stomach, and great heat, and became very feeble; but, becoming accustomed to the privations, during the last three months of her pregnancy she suffered but little inconvenience. After her confinement, she soon recovered her strength and suckled her child. In this case, there was no venesection. M. Delfrasse states that, in two cases, the following course was successful: In the first patient, there was great contraction of the pelvis, necessitating premature delivery on former occasions. In two successive pregnancies, she took, during the last two months, first six, then eight drops of solution, every morning (one part of