The Female Physician / Containing all the diseases incident to that sex, in virgins, wives, and widows; together with their causes and symptoms, their degrees of danger, and respective methods of prevention and cure: to which is added, the whole art of new improv'd midwifery; comprehending the necessary qualifications of a midwife, and particular directions for laying women, in all cases of difficult and preternatural births; together with the diet and regimen of both the mother and child.

by John Maubray

THIS Symptom is nothing else, more than an immoderate Exercitation of the Senses, from too great a Motion of the Animal Spirits: Proceeding from some acrimonious and siccid Vapours of the Humours, ascending to the Brain, and there disturbing the Spirits, by exciting their vehement Motion; which so exagitates the Senses, that the vigilant restless Woman gets either none at all, or but very short Sleep.

THIS watchful Affection is distinguished by a siccid, or calid and siccid Intemperature; attended sometimes with a Melancholick, Bilous, or Pituitous, Saltish Matter; which is either essentially lodg’d in the Head, or communicated to it from the Mouth of the Stomach, or the Veins of the whole Body.

SOME have been so overtaken with this SYMPTOM, that they have not only continued Awake for some Days and Nights, but also Weeks and Months: Insomuch that Hercules Saxon[^[72]] relates of his own Father, that He, being melancholick, suffer’d such like Watchings, without the least Sleep, seven Months long.

HOWEVER in the Child-bearing Woman, the least Degree of such immoderate WATCHING[^[73]] is dangerous; insomuch that it often occasions Deliriums, and Convulsions, by the continual Stretch and Tension of the Fibres.

HOWEVER the Cure of this SYMPTOM may (I hope) be well perform’d both by external and internal Means; externally, by proper Lotions, Inunctions, and Frictions; internally, by proper Soporiferous Medicines adapted to the Quality of the Intemperature.

CHAP. XVII.
Of PAINS in the Hips, Loins, &c.

ALTHOUGH these PAINS (in general Terms) are the Effects of the Compression of the extended Womb, hanging on, and bearing too much upon the neighbouring Parts, by its Gravity and Weight: Yet the particular Cause of such SYMPTOMS (in my Opinion) is Two-fold; and proceeds either from the Abundance of Blood lodging in the Veins of those Parts; or from the growing Foetus, so extending the Ligaments of the Womb, as to oblige the neighbouring Parts to sympathize. From hence the broad Ligaments cause the PAINS of the Back and Loins, answering to the Reins, to which Parts they are strongly fixed; as the round Ones affect the Groins, Hips, and Thighs, where they terminate. Which Ligaments are sometimes so violently extended, especially in the first Time of Pregnancy, that (by the Concurrence of any slight procatarctick Cause) they have been often known to break.

THE Cure of these SYMPTOMS, in the first Case above-mentioned, depends chiefly upon cautious Phlebotomy, and good Repose in Bed; and in the Second, upon proper Swathes, Unguents, &c.