Her pelvic measurements were all three centimeters below normal. The baby apparently was in a perfectly normal position, but because of the size of the mothers pelvis I was afraid. I thought she was going to have trouble. She went into labor one morning about three oclock. The baby was born about seven oclock in the morning with no more assistance than forceps to lift the baby over the perineum. She had no medicine, but she had a perfect adaptation between the passage and the passenger. If it had been a posterior position it would have been a different story.
I think, Doctor Lyle, you are right. I dont believe the homoeopathic remedy will carry a posterior case through as well as will the gas oxygen, or oxygen with ether and olive oil. I believe that as soon as the posterior occiput comes to the place in the pelvis where it is safe to do something with the forceps it should be done. You can bring that head down and you can do a Scanzonian rotation. You can save that woman much suffering, and you can save that baby a great deal of morbidity in itself by saving the pressure, and the necessity of a long, hard labor which may, after all, be unsatisfactory and unsuccessful. I have seen two or three cases where there was no necessity for anything, where the women, went through with practically no pain, where every contraction seemed to do just what it should do but we dont have that very often. In many of the other cases we can help with the medicine, but sometimes we fail.
I had a patient who went into labor with an apparently perfectly normal pelvis. The cervix dilated normally, but the childs head, which was as far as we could tell in a normal position, would not engage. That girl went from bad to worse. The remedy was apparently Aconite, and I gave her a dose of Aconite. That Aconite acted as though somebody had hit her on the head with a brick. She went to sleep immediately. She had no more pain, but she didnt deliver. Instead of her pulse going down where it ought to have been, it kept going up, and she had a little temperature. It was necessary to interfere and we had to do a version and extract that child. Eighteen months later that woman went to labor again and she did exactly the same thing. That time we did a Cesarean section, because the version had been terribly difficult, and although we had saved the child we were a little afraid to try it again. We thought it was easier for the mother to do the Cesarean section. I havent been able to find out why this woman didnt have perfectly normal deliveries.
DR. UNDERHILL, JR.: How long did you wait until you interfered?.
DR. J. B. GREGG CUSTIS: Until her pulse got up to around 120 and her temperature went to 992. She was becoming more restless all the time and was not in very good shape. I thought it was dangerous to wait any longer.
CHAIRMAN GREEN: How about giving such a case a deep remedy of some kind, such as she might need for a constitutional, if you can find out what it is, and see whether or not it would help?.
DR. J. B. GREGG CUSTIS: I think it was just because I didnt know enough to give the right medicine.
CHAIRMAN GREEN: A deep remedy might help that girl. Dr. Custis has had a very wide experience in obstetrics, being the physician in the Florence Christenden Home in Washington where they deal with numberless cases.
Strange as it may seem, breeding bacteria is a costly pastime for even a philosopher; naming them affords harmless occupation for bookmakers, and such breeding and christening is called “science”. Now there is both science and the art of medicine; let the philosophers have their fill of science, but in Gods name! let the sick have the art.–SAMUEL ARTHUR JONES, M.D., 1893.
These advances in pathology, great as they have been, have not altered the relation which the phenomena of natural disease bear to those of drug disease. These phenomena respectively, whether rudely apprehended or clearly and fully understood in all their relations and interdependencies, still bear the same relation to each other expressed by the law similia similibus curantur. And we can imagine no possible development of the sciences of pathology and pathogenesy which could alter this relation.–CARROLL DUNHAM, M.D.
