Page:Medical jurisprudence (IA medicaljurisprud03pari).pdf/108

 are ready to admit that the administration of violent medicines, by involving the uterus in the general shock thus given to the system, will occasion abortion, provided there exist at the same time, a certain predisposition on the part of the female; should this latter condition, however, be wanting, the poculum abortionis may, by the violence of its operation, destroy the life of the unhappy mother, or very materially injure her, without accomplishing the object for which it was administered. In the case of Mrs. Robert Turner, one of the persons poisoned by Elizabeth Fenning, notwithstanding the long and violent sufferings she had experienced during her pregnancy, brought forth a living child at the natural period. On the other hand, a grocer's wife in Edinburgh, having swallowed by mistake a handful of nitre, suffered abortion in less than half an hour; and in the case of Mrs. Atwood, of Mitcham, who with the rest of her family was poisoned by mushrooms, as already related, (vol. ii, p. 431) although rescued from death, miscarried in consequence of the violence which her general system had sustained.

The medicines more particularly employed for procuring abortion are savine, and other irritating drugs, especially those which tend to excite a considerable degree of vascular action; such medicines, likewise, as exert a violent action on the stomach, or bowels, will be likely to produce miscarriage, and are often taken for such purpose in quantities sufficient to produce fatal results. Mr. Burns observes that it is an old remark that those purgatives which occasion much tenesmus, will be more likely to excite the expulsion of the ovum. The strong cathartics,