DISORDERS OF PREGNANCY


The most useful homeopathy remedies for Pregnancy Disorders symptoms from the book The diseases peculiar to women and young children by H.N.Guernsey. …


AFFECTIONS OF THE FUNCTION AND APPARATUS OF DIGESTION.

IN the state of perfect health all the functions of the body are so harmoniously carried on, each receiving its proper portion of the vital force in due season, that no one preponderates over another. But where, as in cases of excessive intellectual development in children, any one structure obtains more than its just share, the others must suffer in equal ratio. Gestation is indeed a normal condition; but the remarkable development of vital action in the uterus, renders it an exceedingly difficult task for nature perfectly to adjust the balance. But while in general a similar increase of vital action seems to pervade the entire system the health remaining perfect, there are numerous and sometimes most distressing exceptional cases. The greater number of these appear in connection with the nervous system, and at first take the from of sympathetic irritation.

There are other disorders in the pregnant state which arise from mechanical pressure, and even displacement of the abdominal organs by the gravid uterus. And there is still another class of disorders, severe functional derangements, and even deeper-seated derangements of the elementary constituents of the blood, which seem to be the result of some of those before mentioned.

All these sympathetic irritations, structural difficulties, and derangements of the constitution of the blood, acquire a still greater importance from the fact that they become the occasion for the development of every constitutional weakness and hereditary taint. The way is long and tedious; what wonder then that the heavily-laden system of the pregnant female sometimes stumbles? How much greatest the wonder if the nine months of gestation, even before being concluded by perhaps twice as many hours of almost convulsive effort, should not expose and aggravate every inherent debility and fully develop every latent miasm.

There is yet another class of difficulties, which if they do not actually make their first appearance during gestation, then at least for the first time become seriously troublesome; this class includes disorders connected with the uterus itself and with its appendages.

Some of these are structural diseases of the vagina, os, or cervix uteri, unnoticed before, now rapidly developed. And even if there were no morbid conditions, the suspension of the regular catamenial flow, could not but exert an important disturbing influence upon the more delicate female constitutions.

But from whatever cause they arise, and to whatever class they may be referred, all the disorders of pregnancy require the most patient and careful attention on the part of the Homoeopathic physician. The season of gestation is the given him for sowing the good seed, from which his patient may reap a rich harvest of improved health during all her subsequent life. The fact just mentioned that the almost herculean labors of nature tend to develop and ultimate all the hitherto latent, hereditary predispositions to disease, renders this period of gestation at once of the greatest value to the true physician, and of the most serious importance to the patient. For even as an hereditary tendency to phthisis pulmonalis, may be most readily and radically cured when its temporary development in a bad cold or even in a severe attack of pneumonia, renders its characteristics more apparent; so the exaggerated manifestation of her constitutional disorders, which in one form or another so afflicts the pregnant female, may be made the opportunity for radically purging them from her own system, and at the same time of purifying the constitutions of all her children.

As already intimated, the tremendous strain upon the constitution of the pregnant female, finds its crisis in the agonizing labors of parturition. These are rendered all the more terrible, are sometimes followed by the most disastrous consequences, and even rendered immediately fatal, by the culmination of the disorders developed during gestation. Thus the same sedulous attenuation on the part of the true physician which will relieve her from present sufferings during the long months of pregnancy, will also render her confinement much more safe and easy, and entirely prevent those consequences which so often fill her subsequent life with wretchedness. And the invaluable means and methods committed to the Homoeopathic physician, will often enable him not only to ameliorate the unfortunate condition of his suffering and despondent patient, but in many instances to secure for her the preservation of the fruit of her womb. In the Homoeopathic jurisprudence, morning sickness and all other forms of gastric derangement must be entirely stricken from the list of justifiable causes for inducing premature delivery. The most distressing of these cases are relieved and the offspring preserved, where under the Allopathic regime the health of the mother was often rendered permanently wretched, and the child inevitably sacrificed at an earlier or later stage of pregnancy.

And in many instances in which the mother had suffered for many months from the disorders of pregnancy incidental to her constitution, and had in consequence greatly deteriorated in her own vital nutrition, the child, if not actually destroyed, became of necessity greatly enfeebled. Such results are too common in the Allopathic practice to attract much attention; and such offspring go far to swell the bills of mortality to the frightful extend of one-third of all who are born dying within the first three years. Contrast with this the fine healthy child born after the mother has been relieved of her distressing disorders of pregnancy, and in a great measure at the same time cleansed of her constitutional impurities by Homoeopathic medication, and you have picture of what has been done in thousands of cases, and of what it is now the duty of the Homoeopathic physician at least to attempt to do in every case of the kind. He is the true physician who seeks not only to relieve the present suffering, but at the same time to remove its cause in the constitution itself, and thus prevent the return of the evil. He is truly a benefactor of his kind, and shall well deserve to be called a Healer of Nations, who, not content with curing the generations with whose successive portions he mingles, thus seeks to improve his present opportunities in the light of an advanced and beneficent science, in such a manner that the race may be rendered more healthy in all the years to come.

Our object in these remarks is simply to call attention to the profound important of most carefully treating the disorders incident to pregnancy; even in cases where their severity does not entail suffering, they many thus be seen to afford most precious opportunities for permanently improving the health of the mother, and of rendering her confinement comparatively comfortable and perfectly safe, and of insuring the preservation and health of the offspring, and finally securing the comfort of both mother and child during the season of lactation-And to state that, for reasons rendered obvious by the preceding remarks, the valuable and efficient remedies for the disorders incident to pregnancy will be found among the antipsorics; and that in some cases the higher these are given the more good will they do. Such is my own experience in innumerable cases.

The disorders which appear appear during gestation vary in almost every possible respect in different females; each individual, however, usually suffering in the same manner whenever enceinte, and with the same comparative severity, unless relieved by appropriate Homoeopathic medication, the Allopathic treatment, in most respects, being considered worse than useless. Since it differs little in effect from tearing down the house to save it from the danger of being burned up. In some females these disorders appear with but slight intensity and soon pass away. While others declare they never have such good health as they enjoy when pregnant. Others again dread this condition as bringing with it for them a long train of most various and distressing sufferings, by which their health is profoundly deteriorated, their strength exhausted, and their prospects in confinement rendered gloomy in the extreme. In some instance the disorders appear very soon after conception, and in different forms continue during the entire period of utero-gestation. In others they are relieved by the third, fourth, or fifth month; while in other cases the difficulties make their appearance only during the later months, and continue to increase in severity till confinement.

And while the disorders of pregnancy principally affect individual cases in some one or even more of their various forms, the entire range of these forms, as collected from the records of many cases, is found to cover every function and particular organized system in the female economy. The principal of these disorders may be classed under the following heads-which are given in the order of their subsequent description: Affection of the Digestive System; of the Secretions and Excretions; of the Uterus and its Appendages; of the Circulation and Respiration; of Locomotion; and of Innervation.

H.N. Guernsey
Henry Newell Guernsey (1817-1885) was born in Rochester, Vermont in 1817. He earned his medical degree from New York University in 1842, and in 1856 moved to Philadelphia and subsequently became professor of Obstetrics at the Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania (which merged with the Hahnemann Medical College in 1869). His writings include The Application of the Principles and Practice of Homoeopathy to Obstetrics, and Keynotes to the Materia Medica.