Femina, A Work for Every Woman

by John A. Miller

The bowels should be freely moved with castor oil or a dose of salts and senna, or by an enema of warm soapsuds.

The food should be bland and of a fluid nature as nearly as possible, broths with an egg, milk gruels or bread and milk.

CHRONIC CYSTITIS.

If the acute attack of cystitis in the course of eight or ten days becomes modified, but convalescence is not established, then it is quite probable that the disease is drifting into a chronic stage.

The mucus or slime that formerly accompanied the urinary discharge is now assuming the character of matter or has become muco-purulent. While this is a very rare symptom of the acute variety of cystitis and usually of brief duration, in chronic inflammation it is one of the characteristics of the malady, and often lasts for a long time; the muco-purulent fluid is occasionally remarkably profuse.

The pus is not always furnished by the free surface of the mucous membrane, but may be traced to small abscesses, situated in the tissue between the mucous membrane and the muscular wall of the bladder. The locality for the formation of these abscesses is principally at the neck of the organ, although there is no part of the organ that is entirely exempt from them. Fortunately, the abscesses generally point inwards or towards the cavity of the bladder, but it not infrequently happens that they break through and empty into the vagina or even into the adjacent bowel or abdominal cavity.

The occurrence of pus or suppuration is by itself so grave a process that it is always accompanied with certain well marked and stereotyped symptoms, which are cold chills, alternating with flushes of heat, increase of heat or fever, anxiety and restlessness. The pain now becomes dull and throbbing in character, and the burning or stinging is only felt when the patient urinates. When there are abscesses, the nervous derangement may be so great as to cause the mind to wander in delirium. Before the appearence of pus in the urine, nothing but a skillful examination can establish the existence of an abscess.

The treatment for suppuration of the bladder, when limited to the surface of the mucous membrane, is always curable with intelligently-directed treatment, which is the same as that for chronic catarrh of the bladder, to be detailed further on.