It will be seen that this patient had comparatively but little general treatment. The persevering use of the cold fomentations, adopted at the first after delivery, must have operated powerfully in warding off heat and other inflammatory symptoms, which tend so much to reduce the strength.
Considering the fact of the inflammation of the breasts, and that no milk whatever could be obtained, it was rather remarkable that she was carried through it without having them suppurate and break.
Case XVI.—December 20, 1850.—The patient was, I judge, about twenty-five or twenty-six years of age; apparently of scrofulous habit; eighteen months before, gave birth to her first child. At that time she was kept in her room three months constantly, with a broken breast. This time she resolved to avail herself of the water-treatment, with a hope of avoiding the awful sufferings which she had before endured.
She bathed pretty freely and daily during this her second period, following the advice laid down in the work entitled “Water-Treatment in Pregnancy and Childbirth.” She kept also busy about household duties, which aided her a good deal in maintaining good general health.
On the evening of the above-mentioned day, December 21st, 1850, the patient was confined, pregnancy having lasted only 265 days, 15 days short of the usual time; the labor was, on the whole, an easy one, and ended between 6 and 7 o’clock in the evening.
Usual treatment, with cooling compresses, was followed faithfully, and after the patient resting a little, a thorough ablution in the wash-tub was given. She slept well during the night.
The patient had long been troubled with piles, and, as usually happens under such circumstances, she experienced a good deal of trouble from the affliction at the time of the former birth. So also, at this time, it came on so bad as almost wholly to prevent her sitting up.
With the view of checking it as soon as might be, we commenced the next morning with the cold packing-sheet, twenty minutes. She had four baths in all during the day and evening, the water pretty nearly cold. She felt all along perfectly well, and would have been able to sit up a good deal the first day, were it not for the troublesome ailment mentioned.
The second day, and onward through the first week, the treatment followed was the cold pack in the morning twenty minutes, and the bath after it; bath in the wash-tub before dinner; the cold pack and bath again toward evening; the bath again before going to rest; and cold compresses most or all of the time, night and day.
At the end of the week the patient was so well that she could go about the house, take charge of her infant herself, and had already dismissed her nurse. She had suffered no feverishness, no pain, nor any restlessness at night. Nor was her strength scarcely at all impaired.