Ergot and cohosh are administered by physicians of all schools for insufficient contractions. These cause violent uterine contractions and great expulsive efforts. If the soft parts are relaxed, labor will be facilitated. If not, great injury may be done. Rupture of the uterus and laceration of the perineum are frequently the consequence. The effects after confinement are liable to be even more disastrous. Among these are violent hemorrhage, puerperal peritonitis which runs a rapid course, cellulitis, milk leg, nervous chills, gathered breasts, etc. These drugs are well understood to be poisonous to any one in a normal state. Surely no reason can be given why a parturient woman may hope to escape their dire effects. Without doubt they lay the foundation for many chronic uterine ailments. Please mark the following, which are only a few of the toxicological symptoms of these drugs taken by a person in health.
Ergot induces rigors, pinched, pale countenance, extreme anxiety, great fear of death, violent headache, stupor, loss of voluntary motion, spasmodic jerking, sudden paralysis, debility and fainting, cold, dry, shriveled skin, knotted veins, tongue cold, livid and pale, vomiting violent, enlargement and pain in the liver, watery diarrhea, swelling of the limbs with cold surface, violent, cramp-like, intermittent pains in the pelvis and groin, hemorrhage, congestion of the womb, local gangrene.
Macrotis, or black cohosh, causes weak but rapid pulse, pains in the back with debility, rheumatic pains in the muscles, limbs seem powerless, drawing pains with trembling, great restlessness, headache with soreness of the eyes and of the base of the brain, heat and pain in the top of the head, dimness of vision with objects floating before the eyes, prickling of the skin, cold extremities, bruised feeling all over, dizziness, loss of memory, great nervousness resulting in hysteria, vomiting, leucorrhea, hemorrhage, etc. Both of these drugs are violent in their action and poisonous in the doses usually administered in labor.
It is rare that one recovers entirely from their effects. They cause uterine inflammation, ulceration, displacement, etc., that are accompanied by amaurosis, loss of memory, headache and many nervous symptoms which are ignorantly attributed to the “last confinement.” Rupture of the cervix, for which ladies so often must be treated in these days, is frequently the result of rapid forced labor by the use of these drugs. As you value good health, never take these remedies in poisonous doses. If uterine contractions can not be increased by the hot bath or cold compresses placed on the abdomen, an attenuated dose of the drug will be followed with as speedy results as a cup full of the infusion or a drachm of fluid extract, and the toxicological effect will be avoided.
Protest positively and persistently against taking a poisonous dose of ergot or black cohosh. Better wait for nature than suffer the effects that are sure to follow.
Instruments will rarely be called in use if women learn the laws of life and obey them. Malformed and diseased as women are, instruments are resorted to far more frequently than necessary. There is a feeling in the profession that dextrous instrumental delivery often saves women suffering, and consequent nervous prostrations. Most women, on the contrary, have a horror of forceps, and this, with the temporarily increased suffering aggravates rather than lessens the prostration. Remember, the physician has selfish temptations for instrumental interference. It entitles him to an extra fee, it saves him time, and possibly gives him eclat as an accoucheur.
In most cases where instruments are now used, speedy results could be obtained from the hot sitz-bath, without danger of subsequent difficulties. Occasionally a case may require instruments, but the experience of many successful physicians, especially the women in the profession, proves that if there is careful preparatory treatment, artificial delivery need seldom be called in requisition. In several hundred obstetric cases in my own practice, instruments were never required where the previous preparation of the patient had been under my own direction.
Women have it in their power to produce such healthful conditions that obstetrical instruments shall be known only in tradition.
CHAPTER XV.
POST PARTUM DISEASES.
“Mysterious to all thought,