Advice to a wife and mother in two parts

by Pye Henry Chavasse

276. Although some ladies, during pregnancy, are very restless, others are very sleepy, so that they can scarcely, even in the day, keep their eyes open! Fresh air, exercise, and occupation are the best remedies for keeping them awake.

MEDICINE.

277. A young wife is usually averse to consult a medical man concerning several trifling ailments, which are nevertheless, in many cases, both annoying and distressing. I have therefore deemed it well to give a brief account of such slight ailments, and to prescribe a few safe and simple remedies for them. I say safe and simple, for active medicines require skillful handling, and therefore ought not—unless in certain emergencies—to be used except by a doctor himself.

278. I wish it, then, to be distinctly understood that in all serious attacks, and in slight ailments if not quickly relieved, a medical man ought to be called in.

279. A costive state of the bowels is common in pregnancy; a mild aperient is therefore occasionally necessary. The mildest must be selected, as a strong purgative is highly improper, and even dangerous. Calomel and all other preparations of mercury are to be especially avoided, as a mercurial medicine is apt to weaken the system and sometimes even to produce a miscarriage.

280. An abstemious diet, where the bowels are costive, is more than usually desirable, for if the bowels be torpid, a quantity of food will only clog and make them more sluggish. Besides, when labor comes on, a loaded state of the bowels will add much to a lady’s sufferings as well as to her annoyance.

281. The best aperients are castor oil, salad oil, compound rhubarb pills, honey, stewed prunes, stewed rhubarb, Muscatel raisins, figs, grapes, roasted apples, Normandy pippins, oatmeal and milk gruel, coffee, brown bread and treacle, raw sugar (as a sweetener of the food), Du Barry’s Arabica Revalenta.

282. Castor oil, in pregnancy, is a valuable aperient. Frequent and small are preferable to occasional and large doses. If the bowels be constipated (but certainly not otherwise), castor oil ought to be taken regularly twice a week. The best time for administering it is early in the morning. The dose is from a teaspoonful to a dessertspoonful.

283. The best ways of administering it are the following: Let a wineglass be well rinsed out with water, so that the sides may be well wetted; then, let the wineglass be half filled with cold water, fresh from the pump. Let the necessary quantity of oil be now carefully poured into the center of the wineglass, taking care that it does not touch the sides; and if the patient will, thus prepared, drink it off at one draught, she will scarcely taste it. Another way of taking it is, swimming on warm new milk. A third and a good method is, floating on warm coffee; the coffee ought, in the usual way, to be previously sweetened and mixed with cream. There are two advantages in giving castor oil on coffee: (1) it is a pleasant way of giving it—the oil is scarcely tasted; and (2) the coffee itself, more especially if it be sweetened with raw sugar, acts as an aperient; less castor oil, in consequence, being required; indeed, with many patients the coffee, sweetened with raw sugar, alone is a sufficient aperient. A fourth and an agreeable way of administering it is on orange-juice—swimming on the juice of one orange.

284. Some ladies are in the habit of taking it on brandy and water; but the spirit is apt to dissolve a portion of the oil, which afterwards rises in the throat.