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

TO which three Efficients, some Modern Authors have thought it sufficient to add the similar, organical, and common Diseases of the Womb; together with some Procatarctick Causes.

HOWEVER, because I have generally observ’d Those, to be very promiscuously and confusedly treated of, I shall (according to my best Ability) endeavour to reduce the many different Causes of ABORTION to such plain Heads, and set them in such a clear Light, that they shall prove evident and manifest to the meanest Capacity: That Women (whose peculiar Good I have only at Heart in the Performance of this Work) may readily conceive them, and thereby be enabled (in most Cases) to prevent their greatest Misfortunes. And that whether the Cause happens proximously and immediately from a stimulated Expulsive, or mediately from a læs’d and injur’d Retentive Faculty.

WHEREFORE I shall now reduce those Causes to the following Four general Heads; namely, 1. To the Constitution of the Mother: 2. The Constitution of the Infant: 3. The Symptoms of the Months: And, 4. To the various Procatarctick Causes of this Tragical Case.

FIRST the Causes of ABORTION, proceeding from the Constitution of the Mother, are Three-fold, and respect either her whole Body, her Womb only, or its neighbouring Parts. Those respecting her whole Body, are,

I. THE four Intemperatures of the Body; as the Calid, which, by its Hot Quality, exhausts the Humours (that are naturally necessary) to the Prejudice and Loss of the Infant.

II. THE Frigid; which, by its Cold Quality, vitiates and attenuates the Infant’s Aliment, to a starving Condition.

III. THE Siccid; which, by its adust dry Quality, scorches and consumes the Ligaments, that they break, like so many Strings that snap before the Sun: Upon which the Infant (being deprived of those Mediums, through which Nature has appointed its Sustenance) corrupts and decays, like a PLANT in Arid Sandy Ground.

IV. THE Humid Intemperature; which, by its moist Quality, debilitates the Retentive Faculty, hinders the Ligaments to consolidate and close firmly, and opens the shut Orifice of the Womb. But besides all This also, by filling the ACETABULA with superfluous Humours, it may suffocate and stifle the INFANT.

V. A nimious and too great an Obesity or Fatness, and too great a Gracility or Leanness of the Woman’s Body: For the One converts the CHILD’s Nourishment to itself; and the Other starves the INFANT for want of its natural Requisites.

VI. A PLETHORY, or too great a Repletion of Blood in her Body; which frequently choaks and suffocates the INFANT.