No attempt is to be made to effect the radical cure of piles during pregnancy. Any such attempt, besides being dangerous, is unnecessary, for the piles usually disappear of their own accord after the confinement. Every effort to make the sufferer more comfortable in the manner we have suggested is, however, right and safe.
DIARRHŒA.
Some women always suffer from looseness of the bowels during pregnancy; others are very liable to attacks of it during this period, either coming on without any assignable cause or easily excited by any slight indiscretion in eating. In many instances these attacks alternate with constipation or with morning sickness.
The diarrhœa, if at all severe or prolonged, should not be allowed to go on unchecked, for it quickly weakens the patient and predisposes her to abortion. The fœtus is especially endangered when the passages are attended with much bearing-down pain. In some exceptional cases, however, a slight diarrhœa seems to be beneficial, for every attempt to remove it appears to do harm; but these instances are very rare.
The treatment required is a simple, and must be a cautious one. Ordinarily no medicine will be needed. If the patient will merely confine herself to milk and arrowroot and rice for twenty-four hours a cure will be effected in mild cases. When it is apparent that the attack has been caused by improper food, a table-spoonful of castor-oil or a tea-spoonful or two of tincture of rhubarb will remove the offending material in the bowels, upon the presence of which the diarrhœa depends. A small injection of a tea-spoonful of rice water and thirty or forty drops of laudanum will often speedily arrest the excessive discharges, and relieve the pain.
CONSTIPATION.
No woman while pregnant should allow several days to elapse without a movement from the bowels. The symptoms of constipation, slight at the outset, soon cause great inconvenience. Among the effects, which, sooner or later, show themselves, may be feverishness, sleeplessness, headache, distressing dreams, sickness at the stomach, severe bearing-down pains, and piles.
Medicines are rarely required in the treatment of constipation, and the pregnant woman should never take an active purgative, excepting under medical advice. Outdoor exercise and regularity in soliciting nature's calls, together with a change in the diet, will usually have the desired effect. Brown bread, wheaten grits, oatmeal gruel, ripe fruits, fresh vegetables, stewed prunes, or prunes soaked in olive oil, baked apples, figs, tamarinds, honey, and currant jelly, are all laxative articles which should be tried.
In some instances a tumbler of cold water drunk the last thing at night, and another the first thing in the morning, will act in a most satisfactory manner. If the constipation should resist these safe and homely remedies, which will rarely be found the case, then medical assistance should be called in. On no account should the wife herself, or in accordance with the counsel of any non-medical friend, resort to purgative drugs.