CONGENITAL MALFORMATIONS



Of course I cannot prove that it would have been otherwise if the mother had had no treatment at all.

It was once my duty to treat a conjugal pair, each for the morbus gallicus, that admittedly was a martial acquisition. A pregnancy occurred while only too many unmistakable symptoms were objects of treatment. During almost the whole of the pregnancy the lady was persistently treated with Mercurius, Aurum, Stilling sylvatica, and the like, with an occasional pause. The unusual term of utero-gestation resulted in the birth of an apparently perfectly healthy spotless child, and, as long as I observed it, it remained so.

No doubt other practitioners are in the habit of treating pregnant women for various ailments, and will be able, from longer experience and greater opportunities than mine, to give more striking examples of its efficacy in regard to the mothers, and perhaps also quo ad the offspring.

Having thus gone rapidly over the subject of the prevention of defect, deformity, and diseases by the intra-uterine medicinal and nutritional treatment of the pregnant person during gestation, it only remains for me to apologize for the meagreness of the practical suggestions I am able to offer in the few minutes allotted to me for this paper, and to express a hope that you will freely add hereto in the discussion which is to follow, so that it may be said that I merely give out the text and you, gentlemen, preach the sermon.

(Before reading this paper of Dr. Burnett my attention was called to the possible relations of cleft-palate in the child and gastric disorders of the mother.

I was called one day to see a mother who had been delivered of an eight months’ child about six weeks before. She was suffering severely with gastralgia. I found the case to be one of gastric catarrh and treated her accordingly with the best results. The child was a small one and was put upon milk, as it had difficulty of nursing from the partial cleft in the palate, besides the mother had only a little milk and that I judged not of the best quality.

The general symptoms of this case recalled a similar one that I had treated about ten years before. In that instance the child had not only complete cleft-palate, but also double hare- lip. The gastric catarrh of the mother was cured and a subsequent child was born perfect. It might be of interest to add that the first mother had morbus coxarius when young, and that the second mother was of a tubercular diathesis–the disease being now apparently held in check by homoeopathic remedies.

That persistent gastric disorders in the early months of pregnancy must seriously interfere with the nutrition of the child is doubtless true, but whether gastric catarrh alone is responsible for congenital malformations or defects, except in a general way, is a problem worthy of farther attention.–T. C. D.).

Thomas C. Duncan
Thomas C.Duncan, M.D., Ph.D., LL.D. Consulting Physician to the Chicago Foundlings' Home.
Editor of The United States Medical Investigator. Member of the Chicago Paedological Society. First President of the American Paedological Society Author of: Diseases of infants and children, with their homoeopathic treatment. Published 1878 and Hand book on the diseases of the heart and their homeopathic treatment. by Thomas C. Duncan, M.D. Published 1898