VI. COURSE AND TENDENCIES. – Child-bed fever, in either of its forms runs a very rapid course; it is capable of terminating life in a few hours; or it may continue for several days, more or less according to the nature of the patient’s system, to the particular character of the attack, and to the kind of treatment employed. That form of the disease proving most rapidly fatal, in which there is a profound “shock” of the nervous system; that in which the vascular system is so disorganized as to induce softening and putrescency of the uterus coming next in order of sudden fatality; then the low, adynamic form of typhoid metritis or malignant child-bed fever; then the primary puerperal peritonitis; and finally uterine phlebitis. Some cases of this last form of the disease have been known to prove fatal, after the first developed symptoms of peritonitis had been (under Allopathic treatment) removed. The general tendency of child-bed fever is to a fatal termination, unless arrested by efficient treatment. But this tendency pursues in different case a variety of courses; in some the nervous system is “shocked” and destroyed; in others there is “dissolution of the blood, which may destroy life at once, or subsequently by means of pyaemia; in others there is disorganization of the tissues; in others, finally, the vital forces are exhausted by the intense suffering, by the gradually loss of oxygenation of the blood inseparable from excessive tympanitis, and by the general severity of all the symptoms.
VII. TREATMENT. – In treating cases of child-bed fever, it is of the first importance to regard the moral state, both in the selection of the remedy, and with reference to securing the patient from all disturbing emotions, especially of fear. Every thing should be as quiet and as cheerful and pleasant in the room of the puerperal woman as possible. See remedies on pages 143, 144, 145, 146, 147. These were purposely arranged for the treatment of Metritis, Peritonitis and Puerperal Fever.
