Page:Clinical Lectures on the Diseases of Women.djvu/16

 dual endometritis was probably also the cause of lier abortion.

Before leaving the case, I call your attention to the circumstance of the great rapidity with which the uterus returned to its natural dimensions, after the offending bit of placenta was removed. Fourteen days after the removal of the placenta, the uterus and its cervix had both returned to the natural size, after eight months of persistent hypertrophy.

The injection of perchloride of iron by Mr. Garstang was used before I had become satisfied of the danger of this remedy ; arising from its sometimes passing into the veins, causing clotting of blood and embolism. In some such cases death would have resulted, if the embolism had been survived, from sloughing of the parts tanned by the iron.

I now come to the subject proper of my lecture — Missed Abortion. Before entering upon that I shall say a few words explanatory of rare conditions that occur in connection with this department of obstetrics. Protracted pregnancy is entirely denied by some eminent obstetricians ; I believe, however, in its occasional occurrence. Protracted preg- nancy is the condition of a woman who has passed 278 days — the interval between the last clay of last menstruation and the expected confinement — and at least a fortnight more than this. There is, indeed, no very exact definition of the number of days at the end of which pregnancy becomes protracted. If, at this time, a woman's child dies in utero, there is not then protracted pregnancy ; she is in a state of missed labour.

It is necessary to say something as to this point — namely, when a protracted pregnancy ends, or when a preg- nancy of any* kind ends, and the condition of missed labour or missed abortion begins. "You cannot say that a woman is~pregnant, without misleading your hearers, if she has only a lithopsedion in her abdomen ; neither is a woman properly described as pregnant who is in the condition of missed