You will naturally expect me to speak of the professional treatment for these troubles; and in regard to this, I remark, there are a great many things to be taken into the account. You cannot well know too much in regard to all the means of improving the general health.
The nausea is the most distressing part of morning-sickness, as it also is of sea-sickness. In the former, as in the latter, it is one of the most comforting things that can be done—the most comforting, rather—to take a good draught of pure, soft water, at about the blood temperature. If enough is taken it causes vomiting, which at once brings relief; but if the stomach should not thus be excited to an inverted action, the water will yet do good, as it tends to “settle the stomach,” and this of itself brings a good deal of relief, although not so much as actual vomiting would do.
Some may tell you that vomiting is dangerous in pregnancy—that it is liable to cause abortion. So it is, as I have before said, if it is rendered very violent by the giving of powerful drugs. But any thing like a reasonable emetic, even of the drug kind, is comparatively safe in this respect; so much so, that the most experienced and most honest physicians are not now afraid to vomit a pregnant patient, if they consider it important to resort to that measure. Emetics of the drug kind have even been used, and apparently with good success, as a cure of the nausea of which I have been speaking.
But do not understand me as recommending vomiting, even by water, the best and mildest of all emetics, except in cases of urgency, and when it can be made to take place without great straining or effort. As a general thing it is far better to fast.
I do not know of any thing in which physicians have been more puzzled than in the treatment of these symptoms. They have left nothing in the materia medica untried. The result is, however, that no plan has yet been fixed upon as being a legitimate one, or one that can be depended upon with any tolerable chance of success. Patients have sometimes died of the exhaustion caused by the vomiting, as has been supposed; but I am more inclined to think they have far oftener been drugged to death. It is mostly in the hospitals that these deaths have occurred, and there, as you know, there is great temptation for experimenting. Young physicians are there allowed to make experiments; and there the older ones are also too much tempted to do as they would not wish to be done by.
Physicians have been so much thwarted in these cases, that they have often recommended bringing on premature delivery, fearing that the patient would be destroyed if they did not resort to this dreadful expedient. Most of them, I have no doubt, have acted honestly in these dreadful emergencies. It is to their credit that they seldom, if ever, have resorted to premature delivery without first having counsel on the subject.
I have already hinted that exercise and activity are great helps in keeping off those troubles that so often occur with the pregnant. I would repeat, BE ACTIVE. Do not let a day, a half day, nor even an hour pass over without your doing something. Be active, regularly, habitually active. Let this be your motto, and your practice, too.
I must tell you also that water-treatment is a most useful help. Take the rubbing wet-sheet when you feel so badly, and see how great a change it will work. Wear the wet girdle, and take the cold hip-bath, not too long at a time, if necessary. I do not know that I can recommend eating ice, as some have done; yet it has sometimes appeared to act very favorably, and great quantities have been used by some in this way, without any apparent harm.
The cold water injections are much to be recommended in cases of costiveness, which often occurs in connection with the vomiting.