Femina, A Work for Every Woman

by John A. Miller

To preclude the possibility of innocent infection, between husband and wife, there is only one means of prevention, and that is a careful toilet, which thoroughly cleanses the bodies in general and the genitals in particular.

Another fruitful source of disease of women, in this country and to an alarming extent in Europe, to which the elder Martin of Berlin called the attention of the profession over thirty years ago, is the specific or gonorrhœal infection of wives by their unfaithful husbands. The number of poor women whose health has been irretrievably ruined, by their husbands having had illicit relations with lewd, diseased women, is only known to those who have made this class of diseases a special object of inquiry. I have nothing to do with the moral aspect of this question, but only with the physical suffering that such men inflict upon their innocent wives and the mothers of their children, for the brief indulgence of libidinous pleasure. To think that any man would take the chances of making his wife a suffering and perhaps incurable invalid, just for the purpose of gratifying temporary animal passions, is to place him beneath the brute creation, which has not the intelligence to reason on the fearful consequences. No man who has been guilty of illicit relations should return to his wife until seven days have elapsed, and even not then until he has repeatedly washed himself by means of a syringe with some cleansing or disinfecting fluid, like borax water, or, what is preferable, a weak solution of the bichloride of mercury.

The wife and mother who entertains the slightest suspicion, must insist upon these precautions, and then not neglect to thoroughly wash and cleanse herself in the manner previously referred to. It is the height of hypocrisy to be mealy mouthed on this subject; the wives and mothers who are fortunate to have husbands beyond suspicion, should learn that some of their sisters have dangers to encounter and heartaches to suffer, with which their own lives are not marred, but perhaps the lives of their daughters may be; for the unhappy woman who becomes the wife of the blear-eyed sensualist, there is only one relief, and that is education in these subjects.

I know of no disease in which a correct and early diagnosis or recognition is of greater importance to avoid the frightful consequence and serious complications, than this one. It begins with a mild vaginal catarrh, which, when it is as yet locally confined to the vagina, can be easily cured. In course of time it spreads itself along the vaginal tract to the cavity of the womb. When it gets there, the treatment becomes more complicated, and for this reason; in order to reach the disease now, the cavity of the womb must be dilated, and this is an operation which the average physician can only accomplish in a bungling and imperfect manner. But even in this stage of the disease, in the hands of a skillful physician, the course of the disease can be checked and the patient readily cured. When the disease gets beyond the womb, when it invades the Fallopian tubes and the ovaries, the picture has entirely changed.

The organs affected are then inaccessible to local treatment, so that the disease invariably continues until the organs are more or less destroyed by inflammation, which results in the tissues breaking down into an abscess. In this stage of the disease it has become quite the fashion to operate in this class of cases, offering as an excuse a sure and speedy cure. Here I would interpose a word of warning to sufferers belonging to this class, not to be too willing to comply with surgical methods, because I know from careful observations, that promises of this nature end often in disappointment and death, while an intelligent conservative treatment can only disappoint but never kill, and with patience and perseverance in the application of electricity and hygienic rules of health, a cure is almost certain. The sick in body and mind are often beguiled into operations of a very serious nature, which are entirely unnecessary, because better results can be accomplished by other methods of cure, in which the possibility of a fatal termination is excluded.

Some women feel tired and languid from morning until night; they feel as tired in the morning when they get up as they were in the evening when they retired. If we tell them that it is entirely due to negligence of their own persons in not using vaginal washings regularly, they will undoubtedly feel surprised. In the great majority of these cases, this is owing to putrefactive changes going on in the cavity of the vagina. In the process of fermentative decomposition, the so-called ptomaines are developed; these are chemical poisons, which are absorbed into the blood, and by their depressing influences on the nervous system are the cause of the weakness and tired feeling. There are no remedies which, when taken into the stomach, will do the slightest good for this condition, and it is a waste of both time and money to expect relief from drugs.

This can easily be remedied by cleanliness, so that the secretions are not long enough retained in the vagina, to decompose and develop these ptomaine poisons.

During and after confinement is another important time for the employment of vaginal washes. The lochial discharge, which is one of the ordinary accompaniments of the newly-delivered woman, is a discharge from the uterus, which continues for several days, growing less and less, for a few weeks, when, in a normally healthy state of affairs, it should cease entirely. The lochia is the oozing from the mouths of the blood-vessels of the womb where the placenta or afterbirth was attached, together with the passing off of the old lining membrane of the womb, while the organ is returning to its original condition. At first the discharge is bloody, and it may retain this character for two or more days after delivery; then the color is changed, partaking more or less of a watery nature and presenting a yellowish hue; it then becomes whitish and ultimately ceases altogether. After the first four or five days the lochial discharge often becomes very offensive; this is a sign of putrescence or decomposition, and the only remedy in this, as in all other similar instances, is to wash the vagina thoroughly with borax water, or with a preparation for which a prescription will be given further on.

In every case of delivery, the mouth of the womb is more or less torn or lacerated; this is unavoidable, and it is generally harmless. One of the surgical humbugs is to sew or stitch, or attempt to stitch, these little harmless tears together, not of course for the good it will do the patient, because she is more likely to be injured by this meddlesome surgery, but to make a business and a fee. The common practice of these and kindred surgical expedients is one of the crying evils of an overcrowded profession which is trying to keep itself employed at all hazards.

The vagina also receives more or less injury during an ordinary confinement; if the midwife or the doctor is too meddlesome or in too big a hurry to get through, he will use the forceps, which simply means, to pull the child out and through the vagina, before nature has had time to dilate or stretch the parts sufficiently, to allow the child to pass through the maternal organs without injuring them. As a result of this brutal haste, frightful lacerations are incurred, which require immediate attention, but small lacerations heal without any further treatment than to keep clean.