Page:Essay on the mineral waters of Carlsbad (1835).pdf/66

 teenth year. After her first confinement with puerperal fever, in 1821, she lingered fifteen months. The existence of gall-stones being suspected, she was sent to Cheltenham, whose saline waters brought on a miscarriage (at Carlsbad we never allow pregnant women to drink), followed by an excessive weakness, which yielded to proper regimen and the sea-side. In 1823, she was happily delivered of a third child, which she lost, ten months old, whilst again pregnant of another, still alive and healthy. Her husband having been suddenly called to sea, she lived in continual anxiety, and was seized with a fever, that alarmed her physician, because the delivery was approaching, which however was easy and regular, but followed by an inflammation of the bowels and liver. She was twice bled, twelve ounces each time, and leeches were applied to the temples, on account of violent head-ach. Some milk is said to have been seen swimming in the blood drawn from her, and since that time she always lingered. A second inflammation of the liver was also subdued by copious blood-letting. She tried again successfully the seaside. Pains in the liver and the head, with a violent fever, returned, in 1826; and, after a convalescence of two months, she had an inflammation of the lungs, for which, in less than twenty-four hours, she was twice bled ad deliquium animi, to the enormous quantity of twenty-two and of eighteen ounces, beside innumerable leeches, blisters, etc. In October 1825, her husband returned from the West-Indies to Eng-