Femina, A Work for Every Woman

by John A. Miller

The bowels are sometimes found to be in an opposite state, namely, constipated; this must be relieved at once. An enema of warm soapsuds answers the purpose, or a half-tablespoonful of warm water, in which a half-tablespoonful of glycerine is dissolved, makes an excellent injection for constipation.

Hot vaginal irrigations should be at once commenced, and repeated as often as twice or three times a day. I always dissolve a teaspoonful of powdered borax in the hot water, of which no less than half a gallon is used at one time; this is antiseptic and healing. After six or eight days, once a day will be sufficient.

Chronic uterine catarrh or uterine leucorrhœa does not require the active treatment which was recommended for the acute form. It depends quite often on causes, whose removal is absolutely necessary to the intelligent and successful treatment of the affection.

The causes that have been enumerated must be carefully and repeatedly reviewed, so that each individual case can be traced to its source. Those causes that are improbable must be eliminated from those that are probable, so that by a gradual process of exclusion we narrow the number down to those that actually exist. This simplifies the treatment to actual conditions that can be intelligently met.

Vaginal irrigations constitute in the chronic form of the disease an accepted and most useful therapeutic resource. There is nothing that will ever contraindicate a thorough cleansing of the vaginal canal, so that the organ may not be bathed in its own morbid and irritating secretion. It is a wholesome auxiliary to any course of treatment that may be adopted. It avoids self-infection and places the pelvic organs in the best possible condition for the healing powers of nature to work out a cure.

If the uterine catarrh is the result of a venous obstruction due to a congested liver and a general derangement of the digestive apparatus, then any local treatment will be of no avail without first removing the hepatic derangement.

Costiveness or constipation is a very common complaint with women and a very painful cause of womb disease, but it is so simple and ordinary in its nature that the wise will not deign stoop to notice such trifles, but if it required for its removal a surgical operation, for which a handsome fee is the inspiring motive, then we should hear of it as often as we do of lacerations or flexions of the cervix as a cause of uterine catarrh, and its removal would then indeed become absolutely necessary for effecting a permanent cure.

Why is it that the treatment of uterine disease has degenerated into “professional faking” that is alike disgraceful to the profession and a daylight robbery of the patient. A woman, for instance, is suffering from what she supposes to be womb disease. She consults a doctor, or what is still worse, a time-serving specialist, who examines her and sees at once signs of uterine catarrh.