I AM not sure that women, as we know women, are ever fitted for the frightful strains upon the emotions one is subjected to in the practice of medicine. It is turn there are admirable and eminent women competing favorable both in knowledge and accomplishment with men; but they usually lack the very sensitiveness and delicate attributes we expect women to have.
Perhaps they have lost them in their contact with the bare truths of nature, or perhaps they never possessed them-who knows ? I am sure that women make better anaesthetists than men, better laboratory technicians, and perhaps more meticulous research workers; but as a rule they are foreign to the demands of calculating, cold-blooded decisions that a general practitioner or surgeon must make.
I came upon facts about venereal disease which shocked me then and still shock me now. As I said before, the result of the survey I took part in then showed that most harlots were infected with gonorrhoea and three out of five had syphilis. I saw fine men and women gradually disintegrating from the ravages of these diseases.
I could not understand, I shall never understand, how any government can sanction by disregard the dissemination of such monstrous scourges-diseases which produce untold agonies and eventually destroy minds of their victims. I am perfectly serious when I say that it is permitted to continue to flourish, venereal disease will destroy civilization.
I am mindful of the magnitude of such an opinion. It is justified by the following interesting facts:
Fifty per cent. of the mutilating operating upon generative organs are performed because of venereal disease.
Ninety-eight per cent. of locomotor ataxia with its dreadful complications are due to syphilis.
Eight per cent. of habitual miscarriages are due to syphilis.
Saddle noses, saw-edged teeth, and many other monstrosities are definitely attributable to syphilis.
High blood pressures, tumorous of the brain and spinal cord, Charcot joints, impaired hearts and blood vessels, and many other frightful preventable maladies are in frequent instances traced to a syphilitic beginning.
Jails, clinics, and hospital are rampant with these loathsome infirmities.
The deaf, dumb, and blind can often blame their affections upon venereal disease.
During the World War my examinations of recruits revealed as inherited, or an arrested, or an active venereal disease in two out of five applicants, for service.
A governmental paradox has always existed. From the time a child is born until it is grown, it is hedged about and protected by countless governmental restrictions and regulations. Pure food and drug laws provide for clean milk, vitamins, health canned foods for its nourishment. School inspections by medical and dental experts provide care for the childs legs, teeth, tonsils, adenoids, eyes, and so forth. He is protected from infectious and contagious diseases such a measles, smallpox, diphtheria, infantile paralysis, and scarlet fever by strict quarantine measures.
But there is not governmental action taken to prevent a child from being born deformed from syphilis. (In 1937, sixty thousand babies were born with syphilis in America.) Little governmental action is taken to prevent them from becoming infected with it when they are grown. We labour mightily to protect our children from minor ills, or from less devastating dangers, and allow the greatest scourge of all to flourish without a struggle.
I am certain these diseases can be controlled. If the government would conscript infected people in peacetime, as it conscripts men in wartime, and sentence them to as it conscripts men in wartime, and sentence them to treatment, we would soon be free from the ravages of a scourge more devastating than any war ever fought. I am delighted to see that public opinion is becoming aroused to the gravity of the situation, and I shall continue to put all energy I have into assisting the educational campaign against venereal disease.
One particular trait family doctor is resourcefulness. To act quickly in an emergency is not in itself a trick, but thee ingenuity which we are sometimes called upon to display almost like it. There was the case of Mrs. Kane, who was going to have twins when she was thirty-nine years old. They were so large that the obstetricians who were called into consultation advised a Caesarean section; but I advised against it, prevailed, and took the case alone.
When the time came for delivery, I extracted a girl and boy who weighed nine and eight pounds respectively. The were the largest twins recorded in the voluminous annals of a noted Chicago hospital. As son as they were born, the mother gasped for air, as if she were having a haemorrhage and became blanched and pulseless.
The sudden evacuation of the enormous pressure on the great vessels of the abdomen caused them to bulge and fill with blood. Pressure had to be re-established, or she would bleed to death within her own blood vessels, as it were because circulation was impeded by the engorgement.
Sandbags had been placed at my feet to prevent me from slipping on the wet tilt floor. I do not know exactly how much one weighed, but it little like twenty pounds, more or less. I grabbed a bag, placed it upon her abdomen to replace the lost weight, and held it there with a tight binder. Resuscitation was given quickly, and slowly she back from where I thought she was going.
How to remove the bag without repeating the engorgement process was not a difficult problem. Thee following day she looked tired, but better then I had expected. I made two small holes in the sides of the bag, and allowed the sand to trickle out slowly, as if from an hour glass, only stopping the stream at night, to permit sleep. Two weeks latter the sandbag was empty, and kind old Nature went merrily on its way; the vessels, having become slowly accustomed to the release of pressures, were again assuming their vasomotor control.
WANTED. Second-hand Homoeopathic and Biochemic books, give particulars and prices.-Miss Roberts, 54 Morningfield Road, Aberdeen.
