Page:Clinical Lectures on the Diseases of Women.djvu/45

Rh have no morbid secretion, but merely a little red patch, often called an abrasion, on one lip or around the os. In such you had better not interfere. You unjustifiably alarm your patient, and you do her no good. Indeed, it is almost certain that local treatment will make matters worse. Bathing and other constitutional remedies may be resorted to. Such redness around the os uteri I have seen in an adult fœtus which had never breathed. Analogous conditions are frequent in the throat, and frequently subjected to prolonged treatment in vain. I have said that chronic catarrh is important; and have, in concluding, to add that it is advisable you should not go on indefinitely treating it. If, after two or three trials, which may each extend over several weeks, you fail to effect a cure, you had much better give up further meddling in the matter. You do no good to the disease or to the patient: you may, indeed, by frequent and prolonged irritation, produce a tendency to cancer.