120 OF TRUE PREGNANCY. 



and sensibility of the breasts, when they are independent of the men- 

 strual function ; of the nausea, ptyalism, and disordered digestion, 

 perversion of the desires and appetite, when they are not results of a 

 morbid suppression of the catamenial discharge. As to the odor 

 given out by the skin; as to the perspiration, the increased tempera- 

 ture, the condition of the pulse, the urine, the color of the nipple 

 and its areola, the size of the neck, the changes in the aspect of the 

 face, &c., their existence is too variable, too fugacious, or depends 

 upon too many different causes, or they are of too difficult determi- 

 nation, to permit us to repose the least confidence in them. They 

 are merely so many resources which the learned and upright physi- 

 cian abandons to the shameless quack, or to the credulous ignorant 

 vulgar who are duped by them. Upon the whole, the rational signs, 

 when united in a certain number, and properly weighed, most com- 

 monly suffice to make us believe in the existence of gestation, but 

 never to give us a mathematical certainty of it, to warrant us in 

 affirming to it before a court, even although in addition to these 

 there should be a suspension of the periodical flux. 



311. Menses. However, in women who have no interest in de- 

 ceiving us, the last mentioned phenomenon deserves the greatest at- 

 tention; it is the most conclusive, and sometimes the only one to be 

 met with; but inasmuch as it is frequently the cause or the effect of 

 a great number of affections of more or less importance, and wholly 

 independent of pregnancy, it is not an easy matter to interpret it 

 correctly. If it happen suddenly, without being preceded by any 

 accident or disease that might account for it, and in a woman who 



/is commonly very regular, it may constitute an almost certain sign 

 of pregnancy, while in the contrary condition, its value, always much 

 lessened, can be determined only by a circumspect and experienced 

 practitioner. I have no occasion to remark that it is of jio value 

 where pregnancy occurs before the first eruption of the menses. 

 Further, it is well known, that a woman whose menses have been 

 for some time suppressed, either from disease or merely from the 

 progress of age, may become pregnant; that some women are 

 never regular except when they are pregnant; and that the continu- 

 ance of the menses after fecundation is found occasionally to be al- 

 most epidemic, or at least, much more frequent in some years than 

 in others. 



312. Size of the Belly. The enlargement of the abdomen in a 

 woman old enough to be fecundated, ordinarily suffices with the 

 public, to make them presume that she is pregnant. It is otherwise 

 with physicians. It is occasioned by so many diseases, that it ought 

 in this respect to be classed in the same category as the suppres- 



