GLASS I. 2. 1. 14. OF IRRITATION. 



externally. Bandages on the limbs to keep more blood in them 

 for a time have been recommended. 



14. Mortio Spontanea. Some delicate ladies are perpetually 

 liable to spontaneous abortion, before the . third or after the 

 seventh month of gestation. From some of these patients I have 

 learnt, that they have awakened with a slight degree of difficult 

 respiration, so as to induce them to rise hastily up in bed; and 

 have hence suspected, that this was a tendency to a kind of asth- 

 ma, owing to a deficient absorption of blood in the extremities 

 of the pulmonary or bronchial veins; and have concluded from 

 thence, that there was generally a deficiency of venous absorp- 

 tion; and that this was the occasion of their frequent abortion. 

 Which is further countenanced, where a great sanguinary dis- 

 charge precedes or follows the exclusion of the fetus. 



Miscarriages are sometimes induced by what is termed a re- 

 troversion of the uterus, in which the fundus uteri is retroverted 

 and pressed down between the rectum and the vagina. This 

 can only occur in the first or second month of gestation, and is 

 generally preceded by a difficulty of making water, and a conse- 

 quent tumour of the bladder; a violent pain about the perinaeum 

 or rectum is thus caused, and a miscarriage is liable to follow. 

 Draw off the urine with the catheter; inject an enema with sixty 

 drops of tincture of opium, if it can be done. If it recurs fre- 

 quently after the miscarriage, a w r ax candle, or a pessary, made 

 by rolling some emplastrum de minio spread on linen, may be 

 introduced into the rectum, and worn as a compress to pre- 

 vent the return for a few days, till the parts recover their 

 strength. See London Medical Observations, Vol. IV. p. 388. 

 and Dr. Hunter's Tables of the Gravid Uterus. 



M. M. Opium, bark, chalybeates in small quantity. Change 

 to a warmer climate. I have directed with success in four cases 

 half a grain of opium twice a day for a fortnight, and then a 

 whole grain twice a day during the whole gestation. One of 

 these patients took besides twenty grains of Peruvian bark for 

 several weeks. By these means being exactly and regularly per- 

 sisted in, a new habit became established, and the usual miscar- 

 riages were prevented. 



Miscarriages more frequently happen from eruptive fevers, and 

 from rheumatic ones, than from other inflammatory diseases. I 

 saw a most violent pleurisy and hepatitis, cured by repeated vene- 

 section about a week or ten days before parturition; yet another 

 lady whom I attended, miscarried at the end of the chicken-pox, 

 with which her children were at the same time affected. Miscar- 

 riages towards the termination of the small-pox are very frequent, 

 yet there have been a, few instances of children, who have been 



