Bloodletting as a therapeutic resource in obstetric medicine / by Fordyce Barker.

  • Barker, Fordyce, 1819-1891.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bloodletting as a therapeutic resource in obstetric medicine / by Fordyce Barker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    city struck me as a most amusing and, at the same time, as a most significant commentary on the change of practice which lias taken place in the profession within the last thirty years. I presume that I should be correct in saying that our prede- cessors, in the same class and number of cases, bled more fre- quently in a month, perhaps in a week, than any of us now do in a year. In all the consultations in obstetric practice, with members of the profession during the last fifteen years, I cannot recollect a single instance where bloodletting had been resorted to, or even alluded to as a therapeutic meas- ure to be discussed, except in a few cases of puerperal con- vulsions. Thirty years ago, the standard authors who guided the practice of obstetrics, both in Great Britain and in Amer- ica, were Denman, Clark, Burns, Hamilton, Gooch, Collins, Ryan, Conquest, Lee, Ramsbotham, Rigby, Gordon, Hay, Armstrong, Dewees, Yelpeau (translated by Meigs), Fran- cis, and Meigs. I find, from a careful examination of all these authors, that bloodletting is recommended as a thera- peutic measure by one or all of them, for the following condi- tions, which occur during gestation, parturition, and the puer- peral state. During gestation, this measure was advised by many of the above authors, and was not objected to by any, for the following symptoms; namely, uterine irritation and uterine plethora, erratic pains, cramps and numbness of the inferior extremities, spasmodic cough, palpitation, pruritus, varices, inquietude, loss of sleep, solicitude and anxiety, head- ache, drowsiness, vertiginous complaints, hemiplegia, anasar- cous swellings of the inferior extremities, to prevent abortion, and also to promote expulsion where abortion is inevitable.1 Yelpeau quotes from Mauriccau the case of one woman who was bled from the arm eighty-six times in one pregnancy, and from De la Motte another case, in which, during the latter months of pregnancy, the woman was bled eighty-seven times, and each of the women was delivered at full term of a fine, large child. During parturition, bloodletting was inculcated for false pains where the patient is plethoric or with a feverish disposi- 1 Francis recommends moderate venesection for the lencorrhcea of preg- nancy. Francis’s Denman. New York, 1825, p. 243.