285. If salad oil be preferred, the dose ought to be as much again as of castor oil; and the patient should, during the day she takes it, eat either a fig or two, or a dozen or fifteen of stewed prunes, or of stewed French plums, as salad oil is much milder in its effects than castor oil.
286. Where a lady cannot take oil, one or two compound rhubarb pills may be taken at bedtime; or a Seidlitz powder early in the morning, occasionally; or a quarter of an ounce of tasteless salts—phosphate of soda—may be dissolved in lieu of table salt, in a cupful either of soup, or of broth, or of beef-tea, and be occasionally taken at luncheon.
287. When the motions are hard, and when the bowels are easily acted upon, two, or three, or four pills made of Castile soap will frequently answer the purpose; and if they will, are far better than any ordinary aperient. The following is a good form:
Take of—Castile Soap, five scruples;
Oil of Caraway, six drops:
To make twenty-four pills. Two, or three, or four to be taken at bedtime, occasionally.[[60]]
288. A teaspoonful of honey, either eaten at breakfast, or dissolved in a cup of tea, will frequently comfortably and effectually open the bowels, and will supersede the necessity of taking aperient medicine.
289. A basin of thick Derbyshire oatmeal gruel, made either with new milk or with cream and water, with a little salt, makes an excellent luncheon or supper for a pregnant lady; it is both nourishing and aperient, and will often entirely supersede the necessity of giving opening medicine. If she prefers sugar to salt, let raw sugar be substituted for the salt. The occasional substitution of coffee for tea at breakfast usually acts beneficially on the bowels.
290. Let me again urge the importance of a lady, during the whole period of pregnancy, being particular as to the state of her bowels, as costiveness is a fruitful cause of painful, of tedious, and of hard labors. It is my firm conviction that if a patient who suffers from constipation were to attend more to the regularity of her bowels, difficult cases of labor would rarely occur, more especially if the simple rules of health were adopted, such as: attention to diet—the patient partaking of a variety of food, and allowing the farinaceous, such as oatmeal and the vegetable and fruit element, to preponderate; the taking of exercise in the open air; attending to her household duties; avoiding excitement, late hours, and all fashionable amusements.
291. Many a pregnant lady does not leave the house—she is a fixture. Can it, then, be wondered at that costiveness so frequently prevails? Exercise in the fresh air, and occupation, and household duties are the best opening medicines in the world. An aperient, let it be ever so judiciously chosen, is apt, after the effect is over, to bind up the bowels, and thus to increase the evil. Now, nature’s medicines,—exercise in the open air, occupation, and household duties,—on the contrary, not only at the time open the bowels, but keep up a proper action for the future: hence their inestimable superiority.