MANAGEMENT OF LYING-IN WOMEN. 585 



of the nurses and old women, the decoction of these plants is a pow- 

 erful means of repelling the milk. The woman cannot dispense with 

 its use if she wishes to avoid tetters, swellings, pains and all the con- 

 sequences of the lait repandu, a common bug-bear even to the best 

 informed women. 



The ptisan of canne is too insignificant and inoffensive for us not 

 to prescribe it for women who repose any confidence in it; the 

 arundo phragmytes is scarcely more active; but, according to M. 

 Desormeaux, the periwinkle injures the stomach, excites the pulse, 

 and ought to be proscribed. 



1244. Whether these drinks have been made use of or not, almost 

 all women in child bed desire to be purged before they get up alto- 

 gether; they then use sometimes an anti-lactic purge, and at others 

 some one of the ordinary cathartics. Weiss's whey and sal de duobus 

 have long enjoyed great vogue among the former; while the latter 

 most generally use manna, or castor oil, sedlilz water or decoction of 

 senna. 



I am aware that it would be dangerous to give such remedies 

 without discrimination to all women, as has heretofore been done; 

 but is it a much wiser course to reject them all, as a great many 

 physicians of the present day recommend to be done? 



If the accoucheur fails to order them, he expose* himself to a 

 thousand reproaches, which I am sure are unjust, but which, never- 

 theless, cause him to lose the confidence of his patients; should the 

 woman be seized with headache or rheumatis.m, even ten years after 

 her lying-in, the milk is the cause of it; do any pimples, or efflo- 

 rescence on the skin, any fever, abscess, or any sort of inflammation 

 make their appearance, it is always owing to the milk; and upon 

 reaching a certain age it is still worse: if the features lose their 

 freshness, if the color of the cheeks and lips fades, if the eyes 

 cease to be brilliant and bright, she is very carelld not to accuse the 

 inexorable sway of time, but she refers to the lait repandu, and the- 

 blame necessarily falls upon the physician who did not drive out 

 that dreadful milk at her last confinement ! 



Such prejudices would doubtless not justify the employment of 

 purgatives, were they as dangerous as some persons choose to say 

 they are, and were they never of any use; but such are not the facts. 

 I have frequently administered them, and can assert that I have 

 never known them to produce any bad consequences; and that, in 

 a great number of cases, they have evidently hastened the re-estab- 

 lishment of the^ digestive functions. I should be afraid of their ac- 

 tion where the tongue is red and lanceolate, or where there are un- 

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