“It is easy for a sensitive woman to persuade herself that her afflictions from the toothache downward, are due to diseases of the womb. Here comes in the charlatan, to exaggerate the disease, if any, and to beguile the patient with promises of cure. The speculum, the caustic and the knife look like work, and she feels that something is being done for her.
“By and by the bubble bursts, and for all the good that this torture has accomplished, the poor woman might as well have adopted the scientific treatment of La-potai, namely, the application of a blister to the top of the head, to raise the fallen womb.”
Dr. E. R. Peaslee says of local treatments: “They have thus far produced, on the whole, more evil than good.”
Dr. Taylor, in his valuable little volume, “Health for Women,” assures us “that by using mere local treatment, the essential disease itself is left neglected, untouched, and even unsought; that symptoms only command the attention, and they will subside and become of trifling account whenever the essential malady is recognized and provided for.”
Such words as these, from men high in the profession, give hope of a tendency to a reaction from the prevalent dependence on local treatment. When such men take the back course, and condemn their own uterine surgery, hope may arise for long-suffering woman. This local treatment should be protested against by women. It is a relic of the past, and is contrary to science and common sense.
Within the memory of many now living, every patient under treatment for acute or chronic diseases was bled. He was also tortured by blisters, leeches and setons. Had he fever, he was denied water to quench his thirst. How the mother’s heart has been wrung with anguish when her darling babe, lying sick in her arms, has pleaded again and again for water? Who has not heard “Drink! mamma, drink!” and turned to hide the sympathetic tear, for, by the doctor’s orders, the little one must be denied!
To-day, where is the physician who bleeds his patient, and applies the blister? Many young doctors have never even seen a leech. Who would think of denying the fever patient water, and all that he desires? What has wrought this change? Mainly the protest of the people. Reforms in medical practice have come because the people have demanded them.
Severe local treatment should be classed with the bleeding and blistering, and, with them, be relegated to the past. Women must protest positively and persistently against the burning, probing and scarifying of the womb. As you value health and life, seek such measures for restoration as are more in accordance with nature. With these diseases as with others the simplest measures are the most effective.
Leucorrhea is not a disease, it is only a symptom of uterine derangement, as a cough is of a lung or throat affection. It is an increase of the normal mucus secretion, being an effort of nature to throw off inflammation. As a symptom it need cause no uneasiness, and should not be interfered with, unless by an occasional warm vaginal bath to insure cleanliness. The conditions which cause the discharge being removed, it will give no farther annoyance.
At all events styptics and astringents should not be resorted to. They only arrest the discharge temporarily, and do not remove the cause. The general and local treatment for inflammation is usually sufficient. Remember that as long as the uterine irritation exists one is better to have this discharge than to have it suppressed.