Cuprum Violent diarrhoea, with cramps in the stomach and chest. Ineffectual desire to urinate.
Digitalis Violent diarrhoea, the stools being ash-colored, or very light; and very slow pulse.
Drosera Loose stool almost continually, rather worse after twelve at night.
Dulcamara Always worse after every cold change in the weather.
Euphorbium Stools like glue prepared for use.
Ferrum acet Frequent diarrhoeic stools, corroding the anus, the face being fiery red.
Graphites Diarrhoea with varices and a smarting sore feeling after the stool when wiping.
Helleborus In cases of diarrhoea in which the urine is found to be scanty, and to contain a deposit like coffee-grounds.
Hepar Diarrhoea, with tenesmus and an itching rash in the bends of the elbows.
Hyoscyamus Diarrhoea, with involuntary jerks of the muscles, immediately before, during, or immediately after the stool. Involuntary stools.
Ignatia Empty, weak feeling at the pit of the stomach, with disposition to take a long breath frequently, a sort of sighing inspiration.
Ipecac Diarrhoea with one continual sense of nausea not a moment’s respite.
Jodium Diarrhoea of watery, foaming, whitish mucus, with pinching around the navel, and pressive pain in the vertex.
Kali carb.
Diarrhoea with sharp, shooting, and stitching pains all over the abdomen.
Lachesis Diarrhoea always worse after sleeping, and with frothy urine.
Laurocerasus Diarrhoea with peculiar suffocating spells about the heart. She is often obliged to lie down on account of this peculiar sense of suffocation.
Ledum Diarrhoea with a sensation of great coldness; she has great want of vital warmth, and can hardly keep warm. Between the anus and coccyx a red humid spot, smarting and sore-itching.
Lycopodium Diarrhoea with a constant sense of fermentation in the abdomen, like a pot of yeast working.
Magnes. c.
A green, watery diarrhoea occurs regularly every three weeks.
Mercurius Morning diarrhoea, composed mostly of slime and fecal matter, with tenesmus before and during the stool. Diarrhoea preceded by a faint sickish pain in the abdomen, entirely relieved by stool. The stools are often mixed with slime and blood, attended with tenesmus. Yellow stools of the color of Sulphur. Salivation; sore, ulcerated gums; loose and sore teeth; aching of the jaw- bones, &c.
Mezereum Diarrhoea with prolapse of the rectum; the anus becomes constricted about the prolapsed rectum, which is very painful to the touch.
Muriatic acid Diarrhoea with intolerable itching of the anus, which is some times so sore that it can scarcely be touched.
Nat. mur.
Diarrhoea like water. Disgust for bread. Severe head ache on waking in the morning. Very vivid dreams, they seem like a living reality.
Nux mosch.
Chronic diarrhoea from pregnancy, with unusual sluggish flow of ideas, so much so that it takes her a long time to answer any simple question. Diarrhoea with fainting.
Nux vomica
The stools are very frequent, but small in quantity, with sore pain in the anus. She often feels as if something yet remained to pass, although a fair quantity may have been evacuated.
Opium Black, watery diarrhoea, sometimes frothy.
Petroleum Diarrhoea only in the day-time.
Phosph Watery diarrhoea, pouring away as from a hydrant, with great sense of weakness in the abdomen, and general debility.
Phosph. acid. White, gray diarrhoea; copious, yellow, watery diarrhoea, with rumbling in the abdomen.
Pulsatilla Watery diarrhoea, only, or usually, at night, sometimes unconsciously evacuated. She has no thirst; a bad taste in the mouth; nothing tastes good. Blue eyes; tearful disposition.
Rheum Sour diarrhoea, with cutting and colicky pains about the navel.
Rhus Diarrhoea with drawing and tearing down the legs with every evacuation.
Sabina Diarrhoea with pain extending from the back to the pubes.
Secale c.
Painful diarrhoea with great prostration. Putrid, fetid, and colliquative diarrhoea.
Sepia Sense of weight in the anus, and an empty, sore feeling at the pit of the stomach; much burning at the anus and rectum.
Stramonium Diarrhoea of a cadaverous smell.
Sulphur Diarrhoea in the morning, driving her out of bed; she must always go in a hurry; she has hardly time to save herself from being soiled.
Sulph. acid. Diarrhoea with great debility, sensation of tremor all over her, without any trembling.
Tartar em.
Colliquative diarrhoea, with meteorism.
Veratrum.
Very exhausting diarrhoea; she feels very weak after every passage, with cold sweat on the forehead, and sometimes all over her.
DISORDERS OF PREGNANCY CONTINUED
AFFECTIONS OF THE RESPIRATION; CIRCULATION; SECRETION, AND EXCRETION. FISSURES OF THE ANUS.
AMONG the disturbances of the function of respiration which may be occasioned by pregnancy, we mention particularly cough and dyspnoea; among the morbid affections of the circulation, are found certain changes in the blood and the varicose and haemorrhoidal enlargements of the blood-vessels. Of disturbances of the function of secretion, ptyalism alone requires especial mention; while the morbid affections of the excretory function will all be found connection with the urinary apparatus.
Cough and dyspnoea are the principal forms of disorders of the respiratory organs, which occur in connection with pregnancy. There may also be oppression of the chest, palpitation of the heart, and other similar symptoms; but these belong rather to the circulation than to the respiration. And so intimate is the connection between these two grand vital functions, that it would be difficult in any given case to determine whether the disturbance of the respiration affected the circulation, or whether the disturbance of the circulation affected the respiration. For our purpose, it is sufficient to remember that both these functions are under the immediate and absolute control of the nervous system of organic life, which, as we have already explained, is most intimately connected with the uterus, and sustains all the development of utero-gestation.
From reflex, sympathetic irritation of the pneumogastric, either in connection with gastric disturbances or in lieu of them, the cough of pregnancy may arise in the earlier months; or it may be the direct result of irritation of the diaphragm from the upward displacement in the later months. In either case the cough is short, frequent, irritating; and it may be perfectly dry, or attended with some expectoration. Influenza may also set in as a complication, in this case prompt attention should be rendered, and a cure effected at once, since otherwise abortion itself may result.
A certain spasmodic form of cough sometimes makes its appearance, resembling whooping cough, and arising from an apparently similar irritation of the pulmonary nerves. Such cough as may be connected with a tuberculous condition of the lungs, as in cases of incipient phthisis, is more apt to disappear under the influence of pregnancy; should the pulmonary difficulties be so far developed that a purely phthisical cough maintains itself during the period of gestation, the state of the patient will require the most serious attention. Since the phthisical symptoms usually appear with far greater intensity after delivery. Another most important indication of this condition in pregnancy, is to be found in the chills, which have been known to occur every day, and which in the entire absence of cough or expectoration were believed to be due to some miasmatic influence. Such a patient was readily delivered of an apparently healthy and full-sized child; but was herself found upon examination to be in the last stage of consumption, never being able to leave her bed or scarcely to speak. She lived but a few weeks after her confinement.
Dyspnoea in its various forms, panting respiration, shortness of breath, oppression of the chest, is a not unfrequent accompaniment of pregnancy. The symptoms of this class, as well as those connected with cough, are more apt to appear in persons whose chests are naturally weak, who are constitutionally predisposed to phthisis pulmonalis, or who have a similar predisposition to hydrothorax. A very sad case of a fatal complication of all these difficulties recently came under our observation. A young woman, aged about thirty, of scrofulous constitution, rather short in statue, inclined to hydrothorax, who probably had some small accumulation of water about the heart for a considerable time, was married in the fall and found herself enceinte in the winter; she consulted her physician, at a distance, for a severe cough with great shortness of breath. She reported herself very much relieved by the remedies advised; but soon after, taking, as was stated, “a cold on her lungs, she died in a few days, suffocated by the copious pulmonary effusion.
Plethora has also been mentioned as one of the causes of dyspnoea in pregnancy, for which of course venesection is the Allopathic remedy. But a more sound physiological view, which denies that there is ever too much pure blood, leads also in this instance to a more accurate pathology, which attributes the dyspnoea to irregularity or obstruction of the circulation, to congestion perhaps in the more aggravated cases, but never to plethora.
