238 THE FCETUS. 



emmenagogues also enjoy a great reputation among the women, as 

 abortives, which happily is but little deserved. Disease? are daily 

 met with in practice which require repeated bleedings, whether ge- 

 neral or local, and for which the tartar emetic is administered, as well 

 as drastic purgatives and other equally active substances, without the 

 pregnancy seeming to suffer from them. Mauriceau speaks of a 

 woman who was bled from the arm eighty-six times in one preg- 

 nancy, and who notwithstanding was at the end of it delivered of a 

 fine large child; he mentions another who was bled from the foot 

 ten times without experiencing any inconvenience. Delamotte has 

 seen the most powerful evacuants produce gastritis, enteritis, perito- 

 nitis and even death itself, without being followed by the expulsion 

 of the ovum. I had the care of a young person who, with a design 

 of concealing the proofs of her dishonor, had produced a violent 

 abdominal inflammation by taking medicines to promote abortion; 

 she died on the eighth day without any symptom of abortion having 

 appeared. I was consulted for another person, who had, with the 

 same view, taken fifteen grains of tartarised antimony; it produced 

 most violent efforts at vomiting, but the progress of the pregnancy 

 was not interrupted. 



614. It ought not however to be concluded from the above facts that 

 bloodletting, particularly from the foot, or the application of leeches 

 to the vulva, or that baths too frequently repeated, &c., can never 

 be injurious to pregnant women; I merely wish to say, that except 

 in case of some peculiar predisposition, these measures most com- 

 monly produce no effect, and that they may be had recourse to if 

 circumstances require them, just as if the woman were not pregnant. 



615. M. Desormeaux had already pointed out the fact that abor- 

 tion is frequently preceded by a state of irritative congestion of the 

 uterus, a general febrile excitement, the train of symptoms which 

 constitute the molimen hemorrhagicum. Very recently Madame La- 

 chapelle and M. Duges have strongly insisted on this condition to- 

 wards which, in fact, almost all the predisposing and occasional 

 causes of abortion tend, previously to bringing into play the con- 

 tractile powers of the womb; but it was an error to regard it as the 

 primitive cause of almost all miscarriages; it is commonly only a 

 secondary phenomenon, an effect of some other external or internal 

 cause, and not a necessary result of any of them; however, there are 

 some women who exhibit it in an evident manner at each menstrual 

 period throughout the wliole course of gestation; whence it follows, 

 that it may suffice to detach the ovum, especially within the first 

 three or four months, and that Klein, as approved by M. Desor- 

 meaux, Madame Lachapelle and M. Duges, had a right to say, that 



