On the nature, signs, and treatment of childbed fevers : in a series of letters addressed to his class / By Charles D. Meigs.

  • Meigs, Charles D. (Charles Delucena), 1792-1869.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the nature, signs, and treatment of childbed fevers : in a series of letters addressed to his class / By Charles D. Meigs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    38/392 (page 48)
    Gynscciorum, sive de mulierum, turn communibus, turn gravida- rum, parientium et puerperarum affectibus, et morbis, folio 1567, contains a considerable number of authors, who wrote on the diseases of women, and the disorders and circumstances of preg- nancy and labor. The collection of Spach is valuable chiefly as a work in which a man can see how stupid the profession of Physic was up to a late period in the history of Letters. Spach's volume has transmitted to us the works on female complaints, of Felix Plater, Moschion, Cleopatra, Priscian, an anonymous writer, Trotula or Eros, Nicholas Koch, Bonacioli, Silvius, Euff, Mercu riali, Montana, Trincavelli, Bottom, Le Bon, Pare', Albucasis, Bousset, Caspar Bauhin, Cordasus, Martin Akakia, and Mercado Among the best is the treatise of Mercatus. Louis de Mercado, known in our libraries as Ludovicus Mercatus, was a native of Valladolid, and was of fame so great as to be chosen Physician to Philip II., as well as to Philip III. He attained to the great age of 88, and died in 1599, about the time when William Har- vey was a Student of medicine. As he died so old a man at the end of the century, you may set him down as eminent and active 35 years earlier, which will place you about 1564, when Spain was receiving the golden harvests of Mexico and Peru, just conquered, as we are now waiting our arrivals of two and a half millions a month from California. Mercado's work, De commu- nibus mulierum affectibus, is printed in the closing part of Spach's Gynasciorum, and occupies its folio pages from 803 to the end of the volume at p. 1080. At the 1070th p. he says: There is also a kind or condition of fevers that are peculiar to lying-in women, and proper to them only, and which is not even by chance to be ever observed in others, or at least very rarely; it depends upon suppression of the discharges, or on a diminished flow of the courses, and their be- coming putrefied within the womb, or converted into a sort of suppuration. In such cases, fever cannot be avoided, as Hippo- crates has taught us—when pus is formed, &c. This is clearly shown by the uterine discharges, which, under such circum- stances, issue forth with a strong fetid odor, and of a watery, sanious, or other unnatural character. Such fevers are similar to all other kinds arising from sources of putrefaction; from bubo or other unnatural tumor; from substances putrefying within