CONVULSIONS. 387 



/ 



vexation, some unexpected news, joy, and all the vivid emotions; 



loss of sleep, freq\ienting of balls and theatres; laboring at night; 

 the abuse of baths, of hot drinks, of coffee, tea, spirituous liquors, 

 and spiced or high-tasted dishes; a succulent regimen, and whatever 

 increases the afflux of blood towards the head; the presence of a 

 great quantity of water in the membranes, or of several children in 

 the womb; rigidity or extreme sensibility of the fibres of that organ; 

 hardness or spasmodic contraction of the neck of the womb; the 

 pressure which it exerts upon the surrounding vessels and nerv§s; 

 the thrusting of the stomach upwards; coition; the suppression of 

 an issue or any habitual discharge; the use of corsets, and too tight 

 dresses; and want of exercise, &c., have been ranked among the 

 causes of eclampsia. To these have been also added, infiltration of 

 tlie [imbs or leucophlegmasia, livmg in hot countries, indulging in ^ 

 too much sleep, leisure, the use of alcoholic elixirs and tinctures; the 

 habit of lying long in bed, atmospheric vicissitudes, and almost. all 

 the common causes which the authors never fail to recall upon the • 

 occasion of each disease they describe, those causes which seem to 

 produce all the evils because they do not necessarily create any one. - 

 of them. 



890. No one can deny that such circumstances have sometimes 

 produced eclampsia; but it is also undeniable that it often comes on 

 without its being possible to assign any satisfactory reason for it. 

 Convulsions appear most commonly towards the end of pregnancy, 

 and their most common occasional cause is labor; they may then 

 depend upon some obstacle which by obstructing the escape of the 

 foetus, soon produces a general disturbance of the system; or upon 

 a simple irritation that re-acts upon the whole economy; or, also, a 

 repulsion of the fluids towards the interior of the body, occasioned, 

 by the efforts which the woman is compelled to make. They may 

 also be the consequence of an attack of hemorrhage, or of exhaus- 

 tion, or the symptom of some rupture, &c. Many practitioners, 

 among whom are M. Desormeaux and Madame Lachapelle, have 

 observed that eclampsia sometimes prevails almost epidemically. 

 " When one of our women had been seized with convulsions, we 

 rarely failed," says Madame Lachapelle, " soon afterwards to have 

 several others in the same state." A tendency to imitation would 

 be here insuflicient to account for the fact, and, besides, could not 

 be applicable to cases occurring out of the public establishments, in 

 private practice, or in those singular epidemics that have been so 

 often observed. 



891. Signs. The attack of eclampsia is, in some women, an- 

 nounced by various precursory symptoms, such as flushes of heat 



