Premature labor is produced by the same factors that bring on abortion, but syphilis plays the most common role here, it being estimated that from 50% to 80% of the cases are thus caused. Next comes nephritis. Habitual abortion means that successive pregnancies are interrupted at the same period of development. Syphilis is usually found as the active factor and more especially in miscarriages of the later months. Each successive abortion occurs at a later period until a living child is born, but it perishes from congenital syphilis, and finally the disease has become so attenuated that a viable child is born. P. 419.
Obstetricians should constantly be on the alert for this protean disease. Its baneful action is often discovered when least expected and it spreads its blight on all three individuals concerned in the procreation of the species, often being transmitted to the second generation. Ricord says that in Paris one in eight is syphilitic, and while in America conditions are better, the disease is not rare and in its lesser manifestations quite common, though often not diagnosed. P. 482.
Interruption of gestation is the commonest symptom (of syphilis) and von Winckel found 61% fetal mortality. P. 483.
THE PRACTICE OF OBSTETRICS. Designed for the use of Students and Practitioners of Medicine. J. Clifton Edgar, Professor of Obstetrics and Clinical Midwifery in the Cornell University Medical College; Visiting Obstetrician to Bellevue Hospital, New York City; Surgeon to the Manhattan Maternity and Dispensary; Consulting Obstetrician to the New York Maternity and Jewish Maternity Hospitals. 5th Edition Revised. P. Blakiston’s & Co., Philadelphia.
This (syphilis) is one of the most common causes of abortion. P. 321.
The causes of interrupted pregnancy may be placed in three classes. The maternal causes are divisible into systemic and the local. The systemic causes include obesity, marriages of consanguinity, pregnancies in rapid succession, etc., and the toxemia of kidney insufficiency. The local causes include all cases of acute and chronic pelvic congestion. P. 332.
Chief among the paternal causes is syphilis, tuberculosis, extreme youth or old age, great constitutional depression, exhaustion from any cause. P. 333.
MEDICAL GYNECOLOGY. Howard Kelly, A.B., M.D., LLD., F.R.C.S., Professor of Gynecological Surgery in Johns Hopkins University, and Gynecologist to the Johns Hopkins Hospital; Fellow of the American Gynecology Society; Honorary Fellow of the Edinburgh Obstetrical Society; Hon. Fellow Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland; Fellow British Gynecology Society, etc., etc., etc. D. Appleton & Co., New York and London, 1912.
The susceptibility of syphilis to hereditary transmission is a fundamental character of the disease. It may be transmitted to the offspring directly by the infected sperm of the father, or from the infected ovule of the mother at the time of impregnation, or the infective principle may be conveyed through the medium of the utero-placental circulation during the course of pregnancy. P. 432.
Whether the infection is communicated through the sperm solely, the ovule, or the utero-placental circulation, the uterine death of the fetus is the most habitual expression of hereditary syphilis. Hereditary syphilis is one of the most common causes of abortion. P. 434.