Mother, Nurse and Infant / A Manual Especially Adapted for the Guidance of Mothers and Monthly Nurses, Comprising Full Instruction in Regard To Pregnancy, Preparation for Child-birth, and the Care of Mother and Child, and Designed to Impart so Much Knowledge of Anatomy, Physiology, Midwifery, and the Proper Use of Medicines as Will Serve Intelligently to Direct the Wife, Mother and Nurse in All Emergencies.

by S. P. Sackett

MENORRHAGIA.

The term menorrhagia should be applied only to cases of menstrual flow, although it is often employed to signify any considerable sanguineous discharge from the uterus, other than normal monthly escape. But I will say something here of cases where there is a more abundant or a more prolonged flow than is natural to the subject of it, and of cases where there is a recurrence of the discharge at short intervals, so as to seem almost continuous.

In that variety in which the discharge is normal in quality but the quantity is increased, there is undue uterine congestion, set up by constitutional causes, or it is induced by slight disease of the uterus or ovaries.

When menorrhagia takes place in plethoric habits, it is manifestly remedial, and ought not to be restrained hastily. We may endeavor to reduce the plethora, and a cooling diet, the recumbent position, and saline cathartics may be enjoined. (F. 61).

If the flow continues five days or more, and especially if depressing effects are manifested, such as general weakness, languor, mental depression, with pain in the head, loins or back, the patient is undoubtedly suffering from the loss of blood, and it is best to restrain the flux by general and local means (F. 176.) At the time when the flow is profuse or long continued, give strong cinnamon tea, a teacupful at a time, or teaspoonful doses of tincture cinnamon every hour. Astringent pessaries should sometimes be used. Formerly injections of cold water were given; recently injections of hot water, as hot as can be borne in the vagina, are considered more effectual. Fluid extract of ergot, in half-teaspoonful doses, may be given every hour for two or three successive hours. Other remedies are elixir vitriol and turpentine, opium and acetate of lead during the attack; and counter irritation to the sacrum, the douche to the loins, sponging, cold vaginal injections, and the sitz bath during the interval. (F. 175).

If astringent or cold injections are used, the patient should lie upon her back in bed, and the fluid should be thrown up gradually. Of course, there are cases where only an experienced, well-educated physician can do all that is required in removing the cause of the difficulty.

CHAPTER VI.
GENERATION.

Generation is effected in the human species through the medium of the two sexes; to effect it there must be the actual contact of the male semen, or its spermatozoa, with a healthy Graafian vesicle.

In CONCEPTION the SPERMATIC FLUID is furnished by the male. When this is examined under the microscope it exhibits a great number of little bodies, which are moving; these are termed spermatic animalcules, or spermatozoa. These are met with in all animals capable of reproduction, and they do not appear in the human species before puberty.

The ovule furnished by the female is existent in the ovary at the marriageable period. Fecundation takes place in the ovary; probably, sometimes, also in the tube or uterus when the ovule is passing out after menstruation.