8. Tea, coffee, and spices. All stimulants, that is, articles which do not go to nourish the system, such as tea, coffee, tobacco, wine, porter, spirits, and the like, should be strictly avoided. All stimulation of the system is followed, necessarily, by commensurate depression. A person takes a stimulant, and feels better for the time. In the same proportion as the stimulation will be the consequent depression. The more a stimulant is used, the more necessity will there be to keep up the habit; and the more the habit is followed, the weaker does the system become. Thus in pregnancy, by the use of stimulation, the system becomes more liable to abortion.
9. Exercise. More than one hundred years ago, the celebrated Dr. Cheyne remarked, concerning abortion and its causes, as follows: “It is a vulgar error to confine tender-breeding women to their chambers, couches, or beds, during all the time of their pregnancy. This is one of the readiest ways to make them miscarry. It is like the common advice of some unskillful persons to such as have anasarcous or dropsical legs; namely, to keep them up in chairs, on a level with their seats, which is the ready way to throw up the humors into their bowels, and fix them there. The only solid and certain way to prevent miscarriage, is to pursue all those means and methods that are the likeliest to procure or promote good health, of which air and gentle exercise are one of the principal. All violence or excesses of every kind are to be carefully avoided by the parturient; but fresh air, gentle exercise, walking, being carried in a sedan or chaise on even ground, is as necessary as food or rest, and therefore is never to be omitted, when the season will permit, by tender breeders.”
In my next letter I shall speak in detail concerning the special treatment that should be adopted in these cases.
LETTER XV.
DISORDERS OF PREGNANCY.
The Evils of Abortion—The great Danger of bringing it on purposely—Cases—Illustrations of the Methods of Cure—Uterine Hemorrhage—Cases of Cure.
In the summer of 1849, walking down the Bowery, in the city of New York, I fell in company with a lady whom I had attended in childbirth, some three years previously. She was of middling stature, and I should judge twenty-five or six years of age. She said she had been for some time desiring to speak to me concerning her health. Since the birth of her last child she had a number of times experienced abortion, at three or four months from the commencement of pregnancy. She could not understand why it should be so; she was tolerably careful in diet, and bathed, to some extent, daily. She was, perhaps, in her husband’s store too much of the time, standing upon her feet, waiting upon customers, etc. Formerly she was a great walker, and could endure a good deal of fatigue, but latterly she was becoming less and less able to take long walks. She soon became fatigued, whereas, formerly, she could go to almost any extent in pedestrian exercise. The question was, how to avoid these abortions and their ill consequences. I gave her advice concerning diet, bathing, exercise, etc., and the next day wrote her husband substantially as follows:
“Dear Sir—Your very worthy wife inquired of me yesterday what she should do in reference to preventing abortions, to which she is of late growing subject. I advised her the following treatment:
“1. Perform thorough ablution on rising in the morning. Drink some water, and walk in the open air, but not so much as to induce great fatigue. Housework is very good, but going into the open air, an hour or thereabout before dinner, will be better.
“2. Take the rubbing wet-sheet, and after it the sitting-bath ten minutes. Take also some kind of exercise before and after this bath.
“3. In the afternoon practice the same thing as in the forenoon.