The treatment must have regard to the general health of the patient. The mode of life must be regulated. A change of scene, if it can be procured, is often of the greatest benefit. Baths are also very useful. They may be taken in the form of a 'sponge bath,' or 'hip bath.' If the former be preferred, the patient should every morning, in a warm room, sponge the whole body, at first with tepid water and, after a time, with cold, the skin being well dried and rubbed with a coarse towel. The hip-bath may be employed either of simple, or of salt, or of medicated water. It should be at first warm, and afterwards cold. The skin is to be well rubbed after the hip as after the sponge-bath. The hip-bath may be medicated with three or four table-spoonfuls of alum, or with a quarter of a pound of common household soda.
In connection with this treatment, injections should be employed in the manner just directed for the white-flowing of pregnancy.
MILK-LEG.
This affection usually appears about ten days or two weeks after confinement. The first symptoms which show themselves are general uneasiness, chills, headache, and a quickened pulse. Then pains in the groin, extending down the thigh and leg of that side are complained of. Soon the whole limb becomes enlarged, hot, white, and shining. Feverishness and sleeplessness now naturally show themselves.
The disease rarely lasts more than two or three weeks, although the limb remains stiff, perhaps, for a number of weeks longer. It is painful, but not dangerous—rarely proving fatal.
When one leg is recovering, the disease sometimes attacks the other, and runs through the same course.
The treatment consists in enveloping the limb in turpentine stupes, followed by the application of poultices to the groin and a light diet at first. So soon as the severity of the attack is over, tonics and a generous diet should be given. The limb is then to be painted with tincture of iodine, or rather a mixture of one part of the tincture of iodine with two parts of alcohol, and afterwards wrapped in a flannel bandage.
The term 'milk-leg' has been applied to this inflammation, for such it is, from the notion that in some way the milk was diverted from the breasts to the limb causing the white swelling. It is scarcely necessary to say this theory is entirely erroneous.
INWARD WEAKNESS.
Many, we may say most, married women whose health is broken down by some disease peculiar to their sex, refer the commencement of their suffering to some confinement or premature birth. Perhaps, in four cases out of five, this breaking down is one of the symptoms of a displacement of the internal organs,—a malposition, in other words, of the uterus. This is familiarly known as an 'inward weakness;' and many a woman drags through years of misery caused by a trouble of this sort.