of the Human Uterus. 79 



time, that they might no longer reproach the under- 

 standings of professors. That pregnancy is a state of 

 disease, was taught by Boerhaave to his pupils, and com- 

 mented on by Vansweiten, in his illustrations of Boer- 

 haave's Aphorisms*. It is like many other discoveries 

 that are now-a-days fallen on. 



The first few pages of Dr. Dewees's pamphlet excited 

 my surprize ; but, when I arrived at the article upon 

 blood-letting, I was overwhelmed with astonishment. 

 He gravely tells us, that in labours attended by rigidity 

 of the os uteri, with or without inflammation, with irre- 

 gular contraction, &.c, the utility of the lancet origi- 

 nated in his own observation, and with himself! That 

 *' in diminishing pain, disposing the os uteri to dilate, 

 the external parts to unfold, Sec, blood-letting origi- 

 nated, as far as I am acquainted, with myselff ." Are 

 all preceding writers on general midwifery silent on this 

 head ? Or is the Doctor's reading limited to his own 

 writings ? Each writer must speak for himself. 



* " Morbi gravidarum." « Postquam gravida est foemina, pluri- 

 mis afficitur malis ex sola graviditate oviundis." Boer. Jfih. 1293. 



" Facile patet, hie tantum agi de illis morbis, qui a graviditate, 

 tanquam causa, pendent, non autem de illis, qui graviditatis tempore 

 contingunt quidem, verum aliis causis originem debent." 



Vansweiten. 



With parity of reason Boerhaave might have said, that the func- 

 tion by which the blood is oxidated is a state, a gradation of disease, 

 because, in the first acts of respiration, children utter cries of appa- 

 rent alarm and pain. Certainly such things can only pointout to us 

 the present general state of suffering humanity. 



t Essay, p. 6r>. 



