FLOODING. 379 



877. The following is what observation has demonstrated: while 

 the blood is endeavoring to glide towards the os uteri, a more or 

 less extensive portion of the placenta or anhistous membrane be- 

 comes fully saturated with it; first one clot forms, then a second, then 

 a third; and these several layers, of various thickness, soon become 

 sufficiently numerous, provided the energy of the hemorrhagic af- 

 fluxion becomes diminished, to exert such a degree of pressure as 

 to retain the blood within its own vessels; it is not by stopping up 

 large openings, by filling large vascular trunks, but by being plas- 

 tered against the pores of the womb, that coagula are enabled to sus- 

 pend a hemorrhage; the same mechanism by which they succeed in 

 putting a stop to epistaxis, when they accumulate within the cavities 

 of the nose. 



878. Provided these coagula are not very extensive, the ovum 

 continues to live, like a tree from which one or more of the roots 

 have been removed: the fluid part disappears by means of imbibi- 

 tion, and the fibrinous layers becoming drier and drier, and less and 

 less evident, remain, sometimes, until labor takes place, although 

 the points which they separate are not re-united. At the Maternite 

 at Tours, I saw a young woman who was thrice seized with slight 

 flooding, at intervals of a fortnight, in the two last months of her 

 first pregnancy. There was nothing peculiar in her labor; but 

 there were found on the surface of the placenta, three distinct layers, 

 about the size of a three livres piece; one of these layers, which was 

 very near the edge of the placenta, was composed of a clot that was 

 still red, of a lenticular shape, and with difficulty separable from the 

 after-birth; the second was composed of a fibrinous concretion, much 

 firmer and scarcely colored at all; the third looked more like a 

 sort of cicatrix. Is it not evident that these three points correspond- 

 ed to the seat of the three hemorrhages that had taken place antece- 

 dently to the occurrences of the labor? 



879. Treatment. It may be said with truth that the uterine 

 hemorrhages of pregnant women, are diseases which require, on the 

 part of the practitioner, the greatest coolness, knowledge and skill; 

 indeed, in presence of such accidents, a few seconds, more or less, 

 often decide as to the life or death of two beings, equally dear; such 

 are the cases where it imports us to know how to choose the remedy 

 and apply it properly, and where a distrustful timidity might become 

 equally fatal with imprudence and rashness. 



The means to which we can have recourse are extremely nume- 

 rous; some of them are, to a certain extent, applicable to all cases 

 indiscriminately, and others are to be employed only under peculiar 

 circumstances. ' 



