Page:The American improved family physician, or home doctor.djvu/274

268 bodily shocks or injuries. Leucorrhoea is the cause of the greatest number of miscarriages. Excessive sexual indulgence is also a frequent cause.

The symptoms of miscarriage are, an unusual sense of languor, uneasiness and weariness, with aching or pain in the back, followed after a few hours or days by a slight discharge of mucus or blood from the vagina, and bearing-down pains. These are at first felt in the back, extending around the loins to the abdomen and down the thighs, recurring at regular intervals, and increasing in strength and frequency; in most cases the pain is as great as in labors at the full term. In some cases the ovum is expelled with but little pain, and sometimes the foetus is expelled and the membranous shell of the ovum retained for many days, and perhaps finally passed off in a dissolved state with the lochia. Hemorrhage seldom continues after the expulsion of all parts of the ovum; but until then it is to be apprehended. As a general rule, the flooding is less the nearer gestation approaches maturity.

Our first treatment should be preventive; but if the case has progressed too far, the flooding requires our principal attention. Allopathic authors deal largely in opium, ergot, &c, and the forcible extraction of the ovum with instruments, and even bleeding from the arm. These drugs and destructions are never necessary, but always injurious—in fact, they often injure the constitution much worse than the abortion does.

The patient should recline in an easy, recumbent posture— the wet bandage be applied around the abdomen, and changed several times a day, and two or three vaginal injections of cold water employed daily. When the flooding is excessive, and in cases of internal hemorrhage, denoted by headache, great lassitude, shiverings, frequent and feeble pulse, and the patient becoming pale, exhausted and faint, with a dark shade under the eyes, the tampion may be employed with advantage, or a silk handkerchief, wet in the coldest water, or inclosing a cylindrical piece of ice or snow, may be introduced into the vagina as far as convenient; it may remain for six or eight hours, and then be introduced again if necessary. Enemata, or injections of the coldest water are also valuable auxiliaries in severe cases. In all cases it is important to have the room well ventilated, and the patient placed on a cool and rather hard bed or mattrass. The inexperienced attendant should not be unduly alarmed at the faintness which takes place after severe or protracted flooding, for it generally happens that this condition favors the formation of a clot or congulumcoagulum [sic], which obstructs the bleeding vessels and effectually arrests the hemorrhage. It is not uncommon for patients to remain an hour or two in a state of deliquium animi, or fainting.

Morning sickness, when very troublesome, is best alleviated